Celestial navigation Celestial navigation Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the ancient and modern practice of position fixing that enables a navigator to transition through a space without having to rely on estimated calculations, or dead reckoning, to know their position. Celestial navigation uses "sights", or angular measurements taken between a celestial body (e.g. the Sun, the Moon, a planet, or a star) and the visible horizon. The Sun is most commonly used, but navigators can also use the Moon, a planet, Polaris, or one of 57 other navigational stars whose coordinates are tabulated in the nautical almanac and air almanacs.
Dynamics of the celestial spheres individual unmoved mover would be required to insure each individual motion in the heavens. While stipulating that the number of spheres, and thus gods, is subject to revision by astronomers, he estimated the total as 47 or 55, depending on whether one followed the model of Eudoxus or Callippus. In "On the Heavens", Aristotle presented an alternate view of eternal circular motion as moving itself, in the manner of Plato's world-soul, which lent support to three principles of celestial motion: an internal soul, an external unmoved mover, and the celestial material (aether). In his "Planetary Hypotheses", Ptolemy (c.90–168) rejected the