Antique Style Brass Navigation Sextant In Wooden Box With Glass Lid
Navigate the seas like a true adventurer with our Nautical Antique Style Brass Sextant! Crafted with high quality brass, sextants provided accurate readings for sailors on sailing ships. Keep it safe and secure in the included wooden box with a glass lid showing points of the measurements, with the words Victorian Travelling Sextant and Kelvin and Hughes London 1917. Dare to sail beyond the horizon!
Box size 15cm x 15 cm, Sextant 14 cm wide x 9 cm long FREE SHIPPING
A sextant is a doubly reflecting navigation instrument that measures the angular distance between two visible objects most often to find a position between the sun and the horizon. Obtaining this angle is called "taking a sight" If the sun is directly overhead, the sextant measures the angle from the horizon up to the sun. In this case, the angle would be 90 degrees.
Every degree = 60 miles. If the sun were 1 degree away from directly overhead, the sextant would read 89 degrees. Then you would know that your position is somewhere within a 60 mile circle, because 1 degree = 60 miles.
Also used of a sextant is to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon for the purposes of celestial navigation.
