Quick Celestial Navigator

Frank Pierros

About this app

QCELNAV is an Android® application to find your geographic position (fix) without the use of GPS, i.e. with the “traditional method” of sextant and chronometer (or just a watch). The app might prove useful in cases of GPS, or power for that matter, lack or failure. The application also features a Magnetic Declination finding module.

The “traditional method”, apart from sextant and chronometer, normally requires:

1. Known approximate position (e.g. by dead reckoning).
2. The use of the current year’s Nautical Almanac.
3. Calculations.
4. Graphical plotting on the map of the solutions found in 3 (Sumner, Intercept – St. Hilaire or other methods). Graphical solutions are necessary, because precise analytical calculations (to find the intersections of two circles of position), are very complex and perhaps beyond the abilities of the average navigator, even with the use of electronic means.

With QCELNAV, requirements 1, 2 and 4 are no longer necessary, while all the complicated calculations are performed by the application, including those regarding celestial bodies' coordinates (Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, plus 58 navigational stars).

No phone, network or GPS connection is required. If the app is installed on an android device equipped with a solar charger, then the navigator is also independent from electric power.

What’s new

Built for API 34. Optimized long-term almanac module.