Information from the Nautical Almanac
1) The Nautical Almanac describes the positions of a selection of celestial bodies to enable you to use celestial navigation to determine the position of your ship while at sea.
2) It specifies for each whole hour of the year, the position on the Earth’s surface of the sun, moon, planets and the First Point of Aries.
3) For 57 selected stars, their SHA & declination are listed once in three days.
4) Altitude correction tables to convert sextant altitude to true altitude.
5) The calendar for the year.
6) Details of eclipses that would occur during that year and the locations on the earth where they would be visible.
7) Details of the months and LMT when various planets will be visible that year.
8) The daily pages that contain the relevant data for each day of the year.
9) Short method tables for calculating position lines after sextant observations.
10) Star Charts and additional details of the 57 selected stars suitable for navigation.
11) Pole Star Tables to obtain your latitude from a sextant observation of the PoleStar (also called Polaris).
12) Conversion of arc to time.
13) Increments & correction’ tables from 0 minutes of time to 60.
Contents of the daily pages of the Nautical Almanac
The right side page:
1. Lists the GHA & Declination of the sun & moon for every hour of GMT, for three consecutive days.
2. Gives information to calculate the times of sunrise, meridian passage of the sun and sunset.
3. Gives information to calculate the times of moonrise, meridian passage of the moon and moonset.
The left side page:
1. Lists the GHA of Aries and for every hour of GMT, for three consecutive days. It also states the GMT of meridian passage of Aries over Greenwich, once for all the three days. This is for the middle date of the three days on that page.
2. Lists the GHA and Declination of the four planets that are used for navigation, for every hour of GMT, for three consecutive days.
3. Lists the SHA and Declination of the 57 selected stars once for all the three consecutive days.
