"Improve" Summary & Team: List of fixes needed & code

[rgleason]

Cruisers Forum Celestial-Navigation Thread - Discussion about the plugin
Celestial Navigation Plugin Manual

Operational Repository for this work Use: https://github.com/rgleason/celestial_navigation_pi and the "improve" branch
Please make PR's to the improve branch

The new builds are landing in the Cloudsmith celestial-navigation-alpha repository
https://cloudsmith.io/~opencpn/repos/celestial-navigation-alpha/packages/
and currently have the same version number as the current release, but I will be adding increments to the last digit.
You can test these out from the above Cloudsmith location, just download the right tarball and use Import Plugin Tarball.

Fixes needed. Bob's 2/10/25 email

Bob and Terry Bossert have identified and provided solutions for improving the accuracy of this plugin.

1. Moon Semi-Diameter and Horizontal Parallax used by Celestial plugin is off by up to +/- 8%. Change Moon SD/HP to approach Nautical Almanac precision. Moon Semi-Diameter and Horizontal Parallax used by Celestial plugin is off by up to +/- 8%. Change Moon SD/HP to approach Nautical Almanac precision. #25
2. Find Celestial Body form's Longitude DR is overlaid by Latitude DR. Find Celestial Body form's Longitude DR is overlaid by Latitude DR. #28
3. Display Celestial Sight Reduction Intercept and Towards/Away on the Find Celestial Body Form. Display Celestial Sight Reduction Intercept and Towards/Away on the Find Celestial Body Form. #27
4. Celestial Navigation Plugin shows incorrect altitude (Hc) on FIND celestial body form Celestial Navigation Plugin shows incorrect altitude (Hc) on FIND celestial body form #24
5. Widen the Minutes field of Celestial Nav plug in Sight Properties form Widen the Minutes field of Celestial Nav plug in Sight Properties form #26

Improvements List from earlier

Improvements and a few small bugs #21 Regarding

• RFE: Minutes Uncertainty (10min default). Eliminate the warning message when line is made "pencil thin" #36
• Bob Bossert: I think the "Find" Celestial Bodies recommendations get at the improvements suggested in your email string. Altitude on the Find form should be Altitude computed. And this is different than Altitude observed.
• Rick Gleason: Recommended Solution: Intercept equation: H0-Hc with Toward and Away addresses my point perfectly.
• RFE: Armchair Accuracy - Ways to reduce errors #37

Code

1. where semi-diameter and parallax is used to calculate Ho.
2. where the Find Celestial Bodies form calls functions to calculate Altitude (Azimuth is ok as far as I can tell) and determine how the Lat/Lon fields got cross wired when entering the form when Boat button is not clicked.
3. anything else Bob?

Programming

1. Bob Bossert (C++ code sections have been uploaded to issues.) Bob is available for questions/discussion.
2. Sebastien Rosset [sebastien-rosset] - Programmed the unit testing feature, recently.
3. Sean Depagnier ??? - He hasn't replied yet.
4. Others??

Past Programming by

1. Sean Depagnier 2012 - present ( now focused on Pypilot and other projects though)
2. Povl Abrahamsen 2017- 2018
3. Stelian [stelian42] 2017-2018 https://github.com/stelian42

Testing

1. Bob Bossert
2. Rick Gleason
3. artisthos (Offer)
4. Sean Cook [SeanPatrick] https://www.cooknavigation.com/ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/celestial-navigation-plugin-redux-98748.html#post3967592
5. Others? maybe David Burch https://www.starpath.com/celestial/celestial_title.htm

Other Celestial Navigation Websites and Calcs

1. Sean Depagnier referenced this website http://siranah.de/html/sail040a.htm
2. Sean Patrick's website https://www.cooknavigation.com/
3. Andres Ruiz González Navigational Algorithms penCPN used to reference this material and the original programmers probably referred to Andres methods.