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Wndsn Expedition Team

Ex Mensura, Scientia

Wndsn Calculators

Companion tools to Wndsn Quadrant Telemeters: Low tech, high utility graphical distance & altitude computers from the Wndsn applied science lab.

To supplement our instruments, and to provide educational materials and diverse ways of accessing our devices and techniques, we are making available a number of calculators, to accompany our printed manuals, as exercise tools, to get a 'third opinion', and to demonstrate underlying principles.

Sun calculator
Measure local latitude and determine declination for a given date, to calculate a number of latitudinal, diurnal, and/or instantaneous solar values.
Star calculator
Determine culmination, azimuth, and hour angle based on a star's declination and altitude.
Range calculator
Measure distance from angular size in degrees, mil, or moa, e.g. distance to object of known dimension(s), depth of a well, etc.
Height calculator
Measure height from angular size in degrees, mil, or moa, e.g. height of object of known distance, elevation of landmark, etc.
Elevation calculator
Measure altitude difference relative to shared base, e.g. the distance to a lighthouse of known height, measured from a skyscraper of unknown height, or the altitude of a structure on a mountain, measured from a valley, or the distance and altitude of an airplane of known size.
Shadow calculator
Measure, visualize, and convert between angles, tangents, and their ratios with a shadow square.

The calculators are RESTful, which means that one can bookmark calculations and their results.

This data service uses one of our new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The API returns data in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, as well as XML, and CSV representations for use in other, customized apps.

Tycho Brahe

A Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) was known for his comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. Tycho's view of science was driven by his passion for accurate observations, and the quest for improved instruments of measurement drove his life's work. He was the last of the major naked-eye astronomers, working without telescopes for his observations.

Well known in his lifetime as an astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, he has been described as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts." His observations were some five times more accurate than the best available observations at the time.

Yet in this my stars were not Mercury as morning star in the angle of the seventh house, in quartile with Mars, but they were Copernicus, they were Tycho Brahe, without whose books of observations everything which has now been brought by me into the brightest daylight would lie buried in darkness.

Johannes Kepler

See also