Theodolite

[Rdutton]

Hi,

New guy here. I'm more of a land navigator with the sextants and was wondering if anyone had any experience or ideas about a make and model of surveyors transit that might be best suited to CelNav.
They do come up for sale from time to time and I'd like to have something in the back of my mind to keep an eye out for if I can swing the expense.

TIA

TJA,

I used to have a Keuffel & Esser transit.  It's exactly like this one on ebay;

Keuffel & Esser transit

It was very good for, well, surveying, and I did use it to shoot several stars and Polaris but never the Sun- no sun shades.

It was quick to level out and to re-adjust once setup.  You can probably guess that it would be easier to use a transit for shooting stars and planets at night than an Artificial Horizon, and for me it was. The only difficulty I had was using the center of the crosshairs to occult a star somewhat and then take the reading of Hs.  Once I figured out how to sight the star everything for getting Hs was simple.  Keep in mind you're mostly working in the dark and the crosshairs are black too.  I tried putting a piece of tissue paper around the front of the telescope (not in front blocking the lens) and then shining a small LED light onto the paper.  This would illuminate the crosshairs and making hitting a star easy.

The doomed Scott expedition to Antarctica used a theodolite instead of an Artificial Horizon.

The ebay transit listed on ebay, above, is going for $185.  That's a good price but the shipping's not cheap. 

Fair winds....

Roland