I see. Thanks.

On the drive home, I think I figured out a way to get both speed and position (well, roughly) using stuff I actually have in the house right now.

It does need a few assumptions, though.

1. The ship needs to have both a "front" and a fixed horizontal. No spinning like a foot ball or bullet.
2. Distances to some very well known objects would have to be known in much better detail than we have now. In the book I have, distances are limited to 2 significant digits.
3. Objects like the Trapezium and the Lagoon Nebula will be recogizable from any angle. I really think the Trapezium will stand out well enough that if it can be seen, it can be ID'd.

Here's my proposal. (Accuracy of measurements enhanced because, we're talking about interstellar travel.)

We can find the X,Y,Z positions of anything we can see from Earth, Polaris is the Y axis, so we just need to find an X and Z. First Point of Aries is where RA starts, so that's as good a spot as any from Earth. Once we have the X,Y,Z plotted, we can find the bearing and distances to any other item we have plotted. If we move the Earth 1 LY along the X axis, the angles to everything (except the far ends of the X axis) will change a little bit. By measuring the amount of that change, the new position should be easy to calculate. The interval between those calculations should give us the distance traveled over time.

Day 1 take angular measure of both the trapezium and a star in M8. There should only be one position in the universe where those objects will appear at those same positions.

Day 2 take a second reading and compare them. Math it out and the result should give a rough idea of both speed and position. As long as there is a manual way to measure the angles accurately, a way to get the trig functions accurately enough, and a simple star atlas with the accurate coords for the two objects used, It should be pretty easy.

No electronics at all means my calculator would be useless, but I did have a spreadsheet that I used to plot star positions on a 3D CAD file. By changing where, 0,0,0 was, I was able to plot the sky from other stars. With the charts and tables, I think I could do the math by hand, and that means it's really pretty basic. For measuring the angles, I'd use the digital setting circles on my goto scope in landscape mode, except, no electronics. That sort of hoses me. Now, if the ship had surveying equipment...

Would this work?

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