Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

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152
Borman
Even though you know the star very wel l , using the system
of estimating the angl e i n ahead of time, you l eave your­
self open to picking the wrong st ars.
Lovell
Yes, one of the big things about t he sextant is you have
t o be sure you can identify the star when you are looking
inside t he sextant after you get the thing down because
you might get the wrong star. That is why you should use
stars in sextant navigation that have identifying features
in the fiel d of vi ew of the sextant.
For instance Capella
was a very good one because it has the 3 littl e stars
around i t, I guess there were 2 stars, I forget .
Borman
Three stars .
Lovell
Three stars, but anyway you coul d tel l Capella when you
looked through the sextant!But,a star that was al l out by
itself, even though it was bright,you really could not
tell whether that was a star or not until you went out
and l ooked again,and tha t was sort of difficult .
Borman
We did not have any radar but I know darn wel l , if I was
out trying t o ef fect a rendezvous , I woul d much rather
have an operati.ng radar wi th range and range rate than I
would that sextant.
Lovell
Wel l the thi.ng i s:
there are a l ot of factors that
affect this thing:
window glare , the fact that we had to
t urn on white light everytime we got a reading, because