Quote:
Originally Posted by Tog_
... Now, if the ship had surveying equipment...
Would this work?
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Depending on speed and scale, it could work. Suppose you were making a one hundred year journey to Alpha Centauri when you lost your 'instruments'. The method you describe would be a little difficult to do, because the measurements to those specific places wouldn't yield numbers larger than the error in any hand & eye type instruments, especially over the course of a day, and because the Trapesium and Lagoon nebula are distributed light sources... but the principle you describe could work if you look at a few near by stars, and how they are moving related to the background.
Measuring the angle between Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri would tell you distance in an absolute sense. Likewise measuring the angular dispacement to Barnard's star, and Sirius, and Vega, would give you plenty of error checking on those figures, and you should be able to make good approximations as to speed and location every few weeks using relatively primative instruments.