Multimedia Gallery
- Navigation Methods: Celestial Navigation
One of the most common navigation watches produced, with many used by the U.S. military well into the Cold War era.
This scrap of paper was found in the Tingmissartoq’s octant case.
Celestial navigation involved taking readings with a sextant that were automatically fed into the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Astronauts used celestial sightings to update data stored in this computer, which calculated the spacecraft’s velocity and location.
To determine position in space, an Apollo astronaut located a specific star using a telescope and then took a fix using a sextant.
This pair of Weems-type second-setting “avigation” watches in a shock-mounted case dates from about 1934.
Its principal purpose was to determine magnetic variation.
An astrodome provided an enclosed area from which a navigator could take sightings.
Ed Collen, a NASA engineer, built this prototype device as a backup for Apollo astronauts in case their primary navigation system failed.
Bats, Samoa (Pteropus samoensis)
