Making SkEye the most advanced Sextant in the world
Since you have made all the engine needed to get from GPS fix/Time to the exact positions of all the planets in the sky you would be able to get to the next challenge... calculate the reverse process... from the positions of the sky objects calculate the longitude and latitude of the observer current fix... and feed Android location system as a Celestial navigation system... those making the most advanced Sextant in the world...!!! You can have also the camera enabled to spot the stars and the moon (as a head up display) and collect the phone position in space with perfect perpendicular sighting in regarding to phone position on hand... it should be a piece of cake after all you have done...
It’s definitely a nice and feasible concept, and as you say, it is useful in emergency situations. Though right now I am too tied up with other stuff. Perhaps in the future.
Thanks for suggesting.
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Anonymous commented
there is a market for this
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Evangelos Achillopoulos commented
Accuracy is irrelevant, coz its based on best effort... While having GPS almost everywhere to have a sextant it seems overshoot... but many-many times almanac data can't be downloaded from satellites... so to have such an option it might be paramount in specific emergency circumstances...
Navigators for centuries where using sextants and even devices like the http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/ to assist them in navigation... its time software and modern Android smart phones to have this ability...
I see it more as an engineering challenge that can rise awareness of your capabilities as a developer than as an sell-able product... To be the first providing such a solution has its own pride...