Abstract
Oceanic navigation is highly dependent on the positioning of floating units. In the past, when satellite navigation did not exist, all floating units that navigated in the ocean calculated their position using celestial bodies and the sun. With the advent of satellite navigation, positioning using celestial bodies has faded and is only limited to emergency cases where the floating unit is unable to use satellite equipment.
In this study, the position of a floating unit in the sea is calculated using two consecutive solar elevations using a recursive algorithm. The results of this study show that by determining the appropriate timing between two consecutive elevations of about 10 to 20 minutes, the best positioning result can be obtained and the accuracy of this method is about 10-1 minutes.