SEAP: The Protractor, the Sextant, and the Student
(2022–2023)- Category
- [RESEARCH]
- Role
- [SEAP APPRENTICE / IPOSTER PRESENTER]
- Medium
- [CELESTIAL NAVIGATION / ENVIRONMENTAL SENSING]
Building a sextant from common materials and testing its accuracy through celestial navigation.
[RESEARCH]Science & Engineering Apprenticeship Program
Naval Academy · Summer 2022 · 40 hours per week for 8 weeks, with Prof. Murray Korman and Kinear Chair Jennifer Bartlett.
- Built a makeshift sextant for less than $5 and studied its precision by calculating my coordinates.
- Created an environment sensor/logger for the US Coast Guard Academy’s library.
- Studied laser refraction, captured images of celestial objects, and created educational astronomy games for the Fairfax County Fair in Virginia.
The Protractor, the Sextant, and the Student
Presented as an iPoster at the American Astronomical Society’s 241st Meeting on January 9, 2023. I created an abstract and an iPoster, mentored by Dr. Jennifer Bartlett.
- Built a sextant out of common materials and tested its accuracy by using celestial navigation principles to find my apparent latitude and longitude.
- Found local apparent noon, measured the sun’s zenith distance, used the 2022 Nautical Almanac, calculated GHA, and compared coordinates with percent error.
- Citation
- American Astronomical Society Meeting #241, id. 170.06. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 55, No. 2, e-id 2023n2i170p06.
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(2025)