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Originally Posted by Pilot_76
In real life what is a good margin of error acceptable between actual position and Assumed position?
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Sextants measure the angle between the sea horizon and a celestial body. These angles are measured in degrees and minutes of arc (1/60th of a degee). Measuring this angle to an accuracy of 1 minute of arc (1') will result in a positional accuracy of 1 nautical mile. Accurate sextants can measure this angle to an accuracy of 0.2'. This means that theoretically one can determine their position to 1/5 of a mile.
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http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~amana/personal/navigation/
That's roughly 1200 feet, or 400 yards, or 365 metres. Very accurate for the open sea, not so good in a harbor, which is why harbor navigation is done by eyeball.
