Dutton's Nautical Navigation.

Dutton's Nautical Navigation (15th Edition)

The importance of twilight Is that you can see the Stars and planets and simultaneously have a visible horizon to use for measuring their altitudes. This phrase, lifted from the above mentioned book, is simplicity in its explanation, yet is representative of the information available in Dutton's Nautical Navigator. This updated edition is an invaluable reference tome that follows a 78-year history of providing aid to navigators the world over.

This 15th publication elucidates on piloting, current sailing methods, radio navigation. electronic charts, the Global Positioning System and bathymetric, Doppler and polar navigation, as well as celestial and inertial navigation and navigational astronomy. A full chapter on time--considered the most important ingredient of navigation--includes apparent vs. mean solar time, the types of time involved in navigation (ephemeral, sidereal, Greenwich Mean and Universal, etc) and the usage of the Nautical Almanac tables for arc-to-time conversions. An exhaustive chapter on ephemeral data follows, which features charts on Nautical and Air Almanac tabulations and calculations and interpolations--actually, so much could be written about this dictionary/encyclopaedia/working reference manual that brevity of summation is virtually impossible.

Voluminous quantities of clearly detailed information coupled with illustrations, tables and charts arrest the reader. To be found in the hands of the weekend boater, the chartroom of the seasoned navigator, as well as a valued instrument in the halls of learning was Dutton's Nautical Navigation created--not to amaze and astound, but to provide a practical reference tool that will save the day when the batteries in the GPS run dry.

Thomas J. Cutler US Naval Insitute Press 2004