Sextant: Angle measurement navigational instrument
A sextant is an object used for navigation which measures angles.
The user is able to measure the angle between the horizon and an object in the sky, such as the sun, a star, or a planet. It originally could measure angles up to 60°, which was one sixth of a circle. This is how it got its name from the Latin word sextus (six). It helps work out positions of latitude and longitude.
References
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Sextant, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.