Celestial navigation with a phone camera
Celestial navigation with a phone camera
Our camera-based Android app Sextant Frame provides a stand-in for a sextant. The camera sight approach generally works best with the moon and the brightest planets, Jupiter and Venus. Less suited are the sun (too bright) and stars (mostly too dim)
So not a comprehensive substitute for a sextant as such, but useful as provisional backup, or as a rucksack-friendly shortcut to hands-on celestial navigation if you are just starting out or just dabbling.
Sextant Frame's UI elements
body vs horizon cursor modes
The app features a cursor widget similar to a tape measure: You first pin the celestial body you are shooting (moon center in this example), and then draw the cursor down to the horizon to read off the angle measured. The widget switches spontaneously to the horizon mode (above right) when drawn near-vertically below the pin. Use the auto-align or nudge controls to precisely center the body inside the cursor perimeter prior to hitting pin. You can use auto-align and nudge similarly to refine the horizon match.
Hit the sextant icon button bottom left to export your measurement to Celestial Navigation 360. The latter opens directly in a New Sight wizard for the date/time and altitude it has received.
Don't forget to set Dip consistently with the photo as you step through the wizard. For instance, there isn't an open sea horizon in the above screenshot, the shoreline affords instead a 'horizon short'.
Calibration check
Internal camera calibration of Sextant Frame relies on manufacturer specs which on some devices may be incomplete or inaccurate. So it's advisable to check it, as is easily done by shooting a moon/planet sight from known position determined via GPS or otherwise: When you set Assumed Position to match your actual position, the sights reduction intercept becomes purely a measurement error. If the auto-calibration is healthy, this error shouldn't normally exceed 20 NM or so.
Bright stars at nautical twilight
As mentioned above, typical device cameras do not capture stars very well in general. Nevertheless , the very brightest (Sirius, Vega, Arcturus..) often capture reasonably well at intermediate altitudes against the nautical twilight horizon.
Bubble horizon
On devices with a gravity sensor, Sextant Frame annotates the capture image with an artificial ('bubble') horizon, dashed line of the screenshot above. To snap to the bubble horizon, move the horizon cursor below-outside the image bounds and hit auto-align.
The accuracy of the bubble horizon varies somewhat between devices and conditions.