Which coordinate system?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by mikeod

Am i correct that deg min secs would be needed for celestial nav?

No.....

If 'reducing sights' longhand you would be working with degrees and minutes to the first decimal place.

If using a computer program you would be doing the same but the program itself would be doing the conversion and using decimal degrees... in fact it would most likely be breaking things down into 'radians'

'Seconds of arc' stopped being used some time before the dawn of pre-history.

Having used minutes to the first decimal place when reading your sextant and also when applying all the corrections it is the norm when writing down the position that you have calculated to round up or down to the nearest minute.

I.e In your log you would not write " N/N Posn. Lat 49* 53.2' S ... ", you would simply write " 53' S "

Hope this helps.