ASTRON 2: Celestial Navigation

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2024

Students have described Celestial Navigation as “the most hands-on course at Harvard.” Teaching is almost entirely experienced in a laboratory setting with constant day and night climbs to the roof for data collection and culminating with a day on the water navigating eastward until Boston sinks below the horizon. Using a quantitative approach, we will construct and use maps to inform us, build quantitative models to predict how objects in the sky move, and explore the development of instruments and methods that resonant in current technologies and systems. These many approaches share the same behind-the-scenes abstractions and quantitative tools as ships crossing the Atlantic, drones and aircraft flying above it or submarines below it, and spacecraft traveling to Mars and beyond. Alumni remark that they finally understand many practical applications for the mathematics learned previously. No mathematical or statistical prerequisites.

Register for ASTRON 2