Ship's Position by Long by Chron and Merpass: Here Is How To Get It

Ship’s position by Long by Chron and
Merpass: Here is how to get it

Written by Capt Rajeev Jassal on September 10, 2018
The World has evolved enormously and so has the technology.
Google has mapped the world so extensively that you can literally put
the house number of a friend and google map will take you to entrance
door of his house.
When the world has become so advanced it looks so outdated to talk

about things like sextant.
But anything that works independant of any external resource will be

valued for ages to come.
Sextant is one such equipment on board the ships.

And because it is independant of any external resource, you will still it
there on board.
Since it is going there for long time, it is time that we know it better.
I have written a couple of articles on sextant and how it helps to get

the ship’s position.
Article such as
 How do we get ship’s position by star sight ?

 How a Marine Sextant Helps in Getting Ship Position ?
In this post, I will discuss about getting ship’s position by Sun sight.
Let us begin.
1. Getting the DR position
The first thing that we must know is our DR position.
We cannot expect to suddenly land ourself in the middle of the sea.
We must be aware of our whereabout.
To know the DR position of the vessel, we just get the last known
position of the ship and apply our course and speed to that position to
get the present DR position.
This is not so difficult task.
Theoretically, we get this by calculating D’Lat and D’Long between the

two positions.
Practically, you can plot your last know position on the chart, draw the
course and distance from this position and measure the arrived
position from the chart.
Alternatively there are many softwares available to get the arrived

position from a known position with known speed and course.
But if you are taking sun sight just for practicing your hands on
sextant, you can simply take the present GPS position as DR position.
This will allow you to better check accuracy of your sight.
Let us say we have got the DR position as
 22 deg 00 min North

 119 deg 48 min East
2. Take the morning sight
In the morning when the sun is above the visible horizon, measure the
sextant altitude of the Sun.
The accuracy of the sight results depend solely on the accuracy of

measurement of sextant altitude.
And the accuracy of measuring sextant altitude solely depend upon the
experience of using the sextant.
That is why it is important to practice taking sights when your GPS is

still working.
Let us say we have taken the morning sight and we have measured
the sextant altitude of the sun as 27 deg 22.1 minutes.
The time of the sight need to be noted down precisely to the second.
So let us say that the time of the sight was 08:33:32 LT (00:33:32
GMT).
Next would be to calculate the observed longitude.
3. Calculate the observed longitude by Long by

Chron method.
This is the part that we all have studied during our competency exams.
We all know about the calculations.
And we know that for long-by-chron, we need to know
 DR Position of the ship
 Index error of Sextant
 Height of eye
 Measured sextant altitude of the Sun
 Time of sight
For the calculation part, you can either do that manually or you can
even use the Sight Calculator on this website.
With the calculations, we will calculate the
 Observed longitude
 True Azimuth of the sun at the time of the sight
This is where most of the seafarers get confused. The observed

longitude calculated by the Long by Chron method is not the longitude
of the vessel.
With the Long-by-Chron calculations we will just get
 One position line of the ship
 Position through which to draw it
Azimuth is calculated to get the direction of position line.

For celestial observations, position line is always 90 degress from the
azimuth of the body.
And the position through which we will draw the position line will be
 DR Latitude of the vessel
 Observed longitude of the vessel
Let us calculate these two things by using the Sight calculator of this
website.
Go to Sight Calculator and then to Long-by-Chron. Next enter all the

input values that you have.
And then click on “Calculate”.

This will calculate the
 Observed longitude
 Position line
So with the morning sight, we have got one position line and we have
the position through which to draw it (DR Latitude and observed
longitude).
As you can see, in this case the position line is almost parallel to the
observed longitude.
2nd Position line by Mer-Pass
So with long by chron, we have got our first position line.
But to get the ship’s position we need a second position line.
We use the Sun’s Meridian passage to get the second position line.
In Mer-Pass, we measure the sextant altitude of the body when it is on

the observer’s Meridian, i.e directly above the head of the observer.
To get the position line from Mer-pass, we would need
 DR Position
 The time when the Sun will be on our meridian or say directly above
our head which is Mer-Pass time of the Sun for that day
 Index error of Sextant
 Height of eye
 Measured sextant altitude of the Sun
Get the Mer-pass time of Sun

We know that the Sun is directly above our head around noon time. In
reality it may be few minutes here and there from the noon time.
The Sun’s Mer-pass time for each day is given in the Nautical Almanac.
But this time is the Local mean time. We need to get the time as per
the ship’s clocks (and GMT time) for the Sun Mer-Pass.
And I am sure you know how do we convert LMT time to Ship’s time. It
is by applying the LIT (longitude in time) to the LMT.
And to get the longitude at the time of Mer-Pass, we need the Mer-
Pass time so that we can apply the run to the observed longitude
calculated by Long-by Chron.
It is a kind of chicken-egg situation.
But as the longitude itself will be DR, we can apply the run and
calculate the longitude at 1200 Hrs LT.
So we have the observed longitude at 08:33:32 LT and let us say the
vessel was doing a course of 45 Deg with speed of 12 Knots between
that time to noon time.
After applying the run, we get the arrived longitude as 120 deg 13.8
Mins EAST. I leave the calculation to you.
For 2nd May 2018, from the Almanac we have the LMT Merpass for
Sun as 11:57.
Ship is maintaining the time as GMT+8 Hours. We convert the LMT

Merpass time to ship’s time.
Now this is the time that the Sun would be directly above our head at
our position.
Measure the sextant altitude at Mer-Pass time

At the Mer-Pass time that we have calculated (11:56:05 Ship’s time or
03:56:05 GMT), we need to measure the Sextant altitude of the Sun.
Around 2-3 minutes before this time, be ready with the sextant on the
bridge wing.
Have one person stand by with an accurate clock.
Around 30 Seconds before the Mer-pass time, you should have brought
the Sun to the horizon through the Sextant and keep on adjusting the
Sun to keep it at the horizon.
When the person with the clock says stop to indicate the Mer-pass
time, Read the sextant altitude from the sextant.
This will be the sextant altitude of the Sun at Mer-Pass.

It is important that the sextant altitude is measured accurately and
exactly at the Mer-Pass time.
Calculate the observed Latitude and 2nd Position line

As the Sun was directly above above head at the time of mer-pass and
at the time of sight, the position line will be in the east-west direction.
Or we can say that the latitude we will get from this sight will be our
position line also as latitudes runs east-west direction.
To calculate the latitude by meridian passage, just head to the sight

calculator and enter all the values and press calculate.
Of course, you can do the calculation part manually or with any other
software or excel sheets you may have. Just make sure to verify the
calculations.
With this we will get the observed latitude of the ship at the time of
the Meridian passage of the Sun.

So we have our Latitude at the time of Meridian passage which was at

1156 Hrs.
Transfer first position line to Merpass time
To get the position of the ship at 1156 Hrs, we just need to transfer
the first position line (that we got through long by Chron) to this time.
The first position line was at 0833 Hrs ship’s time. So the Run time to
1156 Hrs will be 3 Hours 23 Minutes.
As we agreed earlier our course during this time was 045 degrees and
speed of 12 Knots.
By applying the run, we will get the first position line at the same time
as the 2nd position line.
We get the ship’s position
Now both the position lines are at same time. The position at which
these two position lines would intersect will be the ship’s position at
1156 Hrs (Mer-pass time of Sun for that day).
Since ages, maritime industry is obsessed with ship’s position at noon.
So if we need the ship’s position at noon, we just need to apply run for
4 minutes to the position at 1156 Hrs to get the noon position.
Conclusion
Getting the position by Sun sight is somewhat similar to getting the

position by running fix in terrestrial navigation.
In both of these, there is only one object.
Like in running fix, for sun sight too we need to get the position line
from the Sun at two different times.
One position line is then brought to the same time as the second
position line.
The position at which the both position line (when brought to same
times) intersect is the position of the ship.
For sun sight, we get first position line in the morning by measuring
the sextant altitude and calculating the position line with Long-by-
Chron.
2nd position line is by measuring the sextant altitude of the sun

exactly at the time of its Mer-pass.
The morning position line is then brought to the same time as the
position line at the time of Mer-pass.
The intersection of these two position lines gives us the position of the
ship at the time of Mer-pass.
If we need to get the ship’s position at noon, we can just apply the run
to get the ship’s position at noon.

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Ship’s position by Long by Chron and

Merpass: Here is how to get it

The World has evolved enormously and so has the technology.

When the world has become so advanced it looks so outdated to talk

But anything that works independant of any external resource will be

Sextant is one such equipment on board the ships.

I have written a couple of articles on sextant and how it helps to get

 How do we get ship’s position by star sight ?

1. Getting the DR position

The first thing that we must know is our DR position.

We cannot expect to suddenly land ourself in the middle of the sea.

We must be aware of our whereabout.

This is not so difficult task.

Theoretically, we get this by calculating D’Lat and D’Long between the

Alternatively there are many softwares available to get the arrived

This will allow you to better check accuracy of your sight.

Let us say we have got the DR position as

 22 deg 00 min North

2. Take the morning sight

The accuracy of the sight results depend solely on the accuracy of

That is why it is important to practice taking sights when your GPS is

Next would be to calculate the observed longitude.

3. Calculate the observed longitude by Long by

And we know that for long-by-chron, we need to know

 DR Position of the ship

 Index error of Sextant

 Measured sextant altitude of the Sun

 True Azimuth of the sun at the time of the sight

This is where most of the seafarers get confused. The observed

With the Long-by-Chron calculations we will just get

 One position line of the ship

 Position through which to draw it

Azimuth is calculated to get the direction of position line.

 DR Latitude of the vessel

 Observed longitude of the vessel

Go to Sight Calculator and then to Long-by-Chron. Next enter all the

And then click on “Calculate”.

2nd Position line by Mer-Pass

So with long by chron, we have got our first position line.

But to get the ship’s position we need a second position line.

In Mer-Pass, we measure the sextant altitude of the body when it is on

 Index error of Sextant

 Measured sextant altitude of the Sun

Get the Mer-pass time of Sun

It is a kind of chicken-egg situation.

Ship is maintaining the time as GMT+8 Hours. We convert the LMT

Measure the sextant altitude at Mer-Pass time

Have one person stand by with an accurate clock.

This will be the sextant altitude of the Sun at Mer-Pass.

Calculate the observed Latitude and 2nd Position line

To calculate the latitude by meridian passage, just head to the sight

So we have our Latitude at the time of Meridian passage which was at

Transfer first position line to Merpass time

We get the ship’s position

Getting the position by Sun sight is somewhat similar to getting the

In both of these, there is only one object.

2nd position line is by measuring the sextant altitude of the sun

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