American Practical Navigator
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American Practical Navigator
''The American Practical Navigator'' (colloquially often referred to as ''Bowditch''), originally written by Nathaniel Bowditch, is an encyclopedia of navigation. It serves as a valuable handbook on oceanography and meteorology, and contains useful tables and a maritime glossary. In 1867 the copyright and plates were bought by the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy. As of 2019 it is still published by the U.S. Government and is available free online from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the modern successor agency to the 19th Century Hydrographic Office. The publication is considered one of America's nautical institutions. History The most popular navigational text of the late 18th century was ''The Practical Navigator'' by John Hamilton Moore of the Royal Navy, first published in 1772. To have exact tables to work from, Bowditch recomputed all of Moore's tables, and rearranged and expanded the work. He contacted the US publisher of the work, Edmun ...
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Pilotage
Piloting or pilotage is the process of navigating on water or in the air using fixed points of reference on the sea or on land, usually with reference to a nautical chart or aeronautical chart to obtain a fix of the position of the vessel or aircraft with respect to a desired course or location. Horizontal fixes of position from known reference points may be obtained by sight or by radar. Vertical position may be obtained by depth sounder to determine depth of the water body below a vessel or by altimeter to determine an aircraft's altitude, from which its distance above the ground can be deduced. Piloting a vessel is usually practiced close to shore or on inland waterways. Pilotage of an aircraft is practiced under visual meteorological conditions for flight. Land navigation is a related discipline, using a topographic map, especially when applied over trackless terrain. Divers use related techniques for underwater navigation. Piloting references Charts Depending on wheth ...
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Navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. All navigational techniques involve locating the navigator's position compared to known locations or patterns. Navigation, in a broader sense, can refer to any skill or study that involves the determination of position and direction. In this sense, navigation includes orienteering and pedestrian navigation. History In the European medieval period, navigation was considered part of the set of '' seven mechanical arts'', none of which were used for long voyages across open ocean. Polynesian navigation is probably the earliest form of open-ocean navigation; it was ...
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Lunar Distance (navigation)
In celestial navigation, lunar distance is the angular distance between the Moon and another celestial body. The lunar distances method uses this angle, also called a lunar, and a nautical almanac to calculate Greenwich time if so desired, or by extension any other time. That calculated time can be used in solving a spherical triangle. The theory was first published by Johannes Werner in 1524, before the necessary almanacs had been published. A fuller method was published in 1763 and used until about 1850 when it was superseded by the marine chronometer. A similar method uses the positions of the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Purpose In celestial navigation, knowledge of the time at Greenwich (or another known place) and the measured positions of one or more celestial objects allows the navigator to calculate latitude and longitude. Reliable marine chronometers were unavailable until the late 18th century and not affordable until the 19th century. After the method was firs ...
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Defense Mapping Agency
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. Initially known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) from 1996 to 2003, it is a member of the United States Intelligence Community. NGA headquarters, also known as NGA Campus East or NCE, is located at Fort Belvoir North Area in Springfield, Virginia. The agency also operates major facilities in the Greater St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri area (referred to as NGA Campus West or NCW), as well as support and liaison offices worldwide. The NGA headquarters, at , is the third-largest government building in the Washington metropolitan area after The Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Ronald Reagan Building. In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, NGA pr ...
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Bowditch - HistoryMiami - IMG 8106
Bowditch may refer to: Books *''Bowditch's American Practical Navigator'', an encyclopedia of navigation People * Ben Bowditch (born 1984), English footballer * Brian Bowditch (born 1961), British mathematician *Charles Pickering Bowditch (1842 – 1921), grandson of Nathaniel Bowditch, brother of Henry Pickering Bowditch, American archaeologist and specialist in Mayan linguistics *Clare Bowditch (born 1975), Australian musician *Dean Bowditch (born 1986), English footballer *Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808–1892), American abolitionist, physician, public reformer *Henry Pickering Bowditch (1840–1911), American physiologist, Dean of Harvard Medical School * Ian Bowditch (born 1939), Australian fencer *Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838), American mathematician and author of ''Bowditch's American Practical Navigator'' *Steven Bowditch Steven Bowditch (born 8 June 1983) is an Australian professional golfer who currently plays on the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour of Australasia. Bowdi ...
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Carry On, Mr
Carry or carrying may refer to: People *Carry (name) Finance * Carried interest (or carry), the share of profits in an investment fund paid to the fund manager * Carry (investment), a financial term: the carry of an asset is the gain or cost of holding the asset Firearms * Concealed carry, carrying a firearm or other weapon in public in a concealed manner * Open carry, openly carrying a firearm in public Sports & gaming * Carry, a fault in the game of Glossary of pickleball terms#C, pickleball * Carry (American football), a statistical term equivalent to a single rushing play * Carry (eSports), a type of role in multiplayer online battle arena games * Carrying (basketball), a rule breach in basketball Other * Carry (arithmetic), when a digit is larger than a limit and the extra is moved to the left ** Carry flag, the equivalent in calculation in a computer * Carry (song), "Carry" (song), a song by Tori Amos * Suzuki Carry, a light commercial vehicle See also

* * Carey (dis ...
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Buoy
A buoy () is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with ocean currents. Types Navigational buoys * Race course marker buoys are used for buoy racing, the most prevalent form of yacht racing and power boat racing. They delimit the course and must be passed to a specified side. They are also used in underwater orienteering competitions. * Emergency wreck buoys provide a clear and unambiguous means of temporarily marking new wrecks, typically for the first 24–72 hours. They are coloured in an equal number of blue and yellow vertical stripes and fitted with an alternating blue and yellow flashing light. They were implemented following collisions in the Dover Strait in 2002 when vessels struck the new wreck of the . * Ice marking buoys mark holes in frozen lakes and rivers so snowmobiles do not drive over the holes. * Large Navigational Buoys (LNB, or Lanby buoys) are automatic buoys over 10 m high equipped with ...
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United States Of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo ...
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Beaufort Scale
The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land. Its full name is the Beaufort wind force scale. History The scale was devised in 1805 by the Irish hydrographer Francis Beaufort (later Rear Admiral), a Royal Navy officer, while serving on . The scale that carries Beaufort's name had a long and complex evolution from the previous work of others (including Daniel Defoe the century before) to when Beaufort was Hydrographer of the Navy in the 1830s, when it was adopted officially and first used during the voyage of HMS ''Beagle'' under Captain Robert FitzRoy, who was later to set up the first Meteorological Office (Met Office) in Britain giving regular weather forecasts. In the 18th century, naval officers made regular weather observations, but there was no standard scale and so they could be very subjective – one man's "stiff breeze" might be another's "soft breeze". Beaufort succeeded in standardising the sc ...
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Meteorology
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not begin until the 18th century. The 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data. It was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics, and more particularly in the latter half of the 20th century the development of the computer (allowing for the automated solution of a great many modelling equations) that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved. An important branch of weather forecasting is marine weather forecasting as it relates to maritime and coastal safety, in which weather effects also include atmospheric interactions with large bodies of water. Meteorological pheno ...
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Oceanography
Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamics; plate tectonics and the geology of the sea floor; and fluxes of various chemical substances and physical properties within the ocean and across its boundaries. These diverse topics reflect multiple disciplines that oceanographers utilize to glean further knowledge of the world ocean, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, climatology, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology and physics. Paleoceanography studies the history of the oceans in the geologic past. An oceanographer is a person who studies many matters concerned with oceans, including marine geology, physics, chemistry and biology. History Early history Humans first acquired knowledge of the waves and currents of the seas and oceans in pre-historic times. Observations ...
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Sight Reduction
In astronavigation, sight reduction is the process of deriving from a sight, (in celestial navigation usually obtained using a sextant), the information needed for establishing a line of position, generally by intercept method. Sight is defined as the observation of the altitude, and sometimes also the azimuth, of a celestial body for a line of position; or the data obtained by such observation. The mathematical basis of sight reduction is the circle of equal altitude. The calculation can be done by computer, or by hand via tabular methods and longhand methods. Algorithm Given: * Lat, the latitude (North - positive, South - negative), Lon the longitude (East - positive, West - negative), both approximate (assumed); * Dec, the declination of the body observed; * GHA, the Greenwich hour angle of the body observed; * LHA = GHA + Lon, the local hour angle of the body observed. First calculate the altitude of the celestial body Hc using the equation of circle of equal altitude: \s ...
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