What is a sextant?

Question

What is a sextant?

Answer 1

its like a compas on a have circle with degrees on it and a water level

you aim it at the horizon and the sun or a star and you can deteremine where you are on the sea

they greatest invention for navigators before the radio and now satalite navigation which is much more acurate

Answer 2

an instrument

Answer 3

A sextant is an optical instrument used to measure the angle of the sun from the local horizon. Basically it looks like a small scope mounted onto geometric half circle compass.

The best minds spent hundreds of years trying to figure out how to guage a boats longitude on the open ocean. North south is easy to guage by the north star, but what about east west. Turns out the scientists could not solve this mystery it was finally solved by a clock maker.

He postulated that if you could determine when local noon was where the boat was sitting and you knew what time it was at the meridian at the exact same instant you could figure out how far you were from Greenwich England based on time versus the circumference of the Earth. I live at GMT -8 hours.

Simple right?