Diploma in Celestial Navigation

The ‘Diploma in Celestial Navigation’ is a free online course that has been specially prepared to teach you about solar system measurements. This course will help you understand the calculations involved during celestial navigation to protect a shipping vessel and its crew. When learning about celestial navigation, you will gain an understanding of the difference between the perihelion and aphelion, and you will learn how to identify the celestial pole, solstices and equinoxes. You will learn about the two types of eclipses, solar and lunar, and the conditions required for each eclipse to occur. The daily motion of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth will also be covered. Do you know that the Earth revolves around the sun in an anti-clockwise direction and completes a revolution in approximately 365 days? Prepare to learn more interesting facts and common terminologies associated with the equatorial coordinate system.

Next, this course will teach you about the characteristics of sextant altitude and the horizon system of coordinates. Parallax, the apparent movement of objects when viewed from different positions, is an important part of navigation and will be covered in this course. A navigator should have adequate knowledge of the relationship between time and longitude. Therefore, the equation of time, as well as the step-by-step calculations of time used in celestial navigation, will be covered in this course. By taking this course, you will be able to determine the position fixing of a ship when the ship is out of sight of land. You will also be able to calculate the time of meridian altitude of the sun and deduce the latitude by the method of ex-meridian of the sun.

Furthermore, if you want to learn how to calculate a ship’s position by two simultaneous or staggered observations, then you need to complete this course. You will learn about the concept of imaginary latitude, as well as the longitude grid in position finding and coastal navigation features. You will uncover key related terms, such as line of position, meridian passage and Greenwich Mean Time. The course also answers frequently asked questions on the procedure for calculating latitude and plotting lines of position as well as how to obtain the local hour angle and declination for the GMT, including how to apply the intercept formula. Completing this course will help you gain specialized knowledge needed to find the GMT of meridian passage to the nearest second, as well as how to find the latitude and line of position. This course will be of great interest to students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation. So, register for this course and start your next learning journey today.