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Celestial Navigation (instruction video)

NathanielsCAD · 189.8K views · 2016-03-11 · 45:54

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Overview

A roughly 45-minute vintage US military instructional film that gives a comprehensive overview of celestial navigation, covering sextant use and the theory behind lines of position.

On Hacker News

HN points to it as an unusually clear teaching film on how celestial navigation works, and as an example of how good old military training material is.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Ships, submarines & maritimeMilitary history & warfareEducation & learning
Search by tags
celestial navigationsextantnavytraining filmnavigation theory

What people said

matheusmoreira · 2025-09 · Strong recommendation

I love these military training movies, they're so good at teaching complex concepts. This one about celestial navigation is really good as well: [VIDEO]

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matheusmoreira · 2022-03 · Recommendation

Yeah, what is it about these old military materials that makes them so great? They're easy to follow and understand. Here's an old video about celestial navigation: [VIDEO] It feels like we've forgotten how to make videos like these.

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throw0101a · 2021-02 · Recommendation

> Military solutions will fall back to inertial, celestial or optical guidance, and people using GPS for navigation will at worst show up where they need to be somewhat later than planned. The US Navy re-started celestial navigation a few years ago: * [LINK] This (1960s?) US government produced (45m) video video gives a pretty good overview: * [VIDEO] For those wanting to invest (substantially) more time, the two videos by "Tippecanoe Boats" are slightly rambling at times, but he does lay things out pretty well by the end of it (second is largely examples): * [LINK] * [LINK]

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Sources

Video by NathanielsCAD, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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