Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
sextant .
Etymologies
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Examples
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One of the sextants was a very good instrument, but the glasses of the other were not clear, and unfortunately the barometer was broken and useless, since it had the syphon tube, which could not be replaced in the colony.
Expedition into Central Australia Charles Sturt 1832
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The satellites making up the GPS enable road users to pinpoint their own locations, in the way that sextants enabled ships to ascertain their whereabouts.
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The Edmund catalog featured boomerangs, lenses, sextants, chemistry kits, robot parts, gyroscopes and the famous drinking bird, which appeared to be a perpetual-motion machine.
He Supplied the Gadgets to Scientists of All Ages Stephen Miller 2012
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But the sextants did not enable ships to be "tracked," and neither can GPS.
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At night, with weather permitting, navigators could use sextants to “shoot the stars” with more accuracy than sun angles, and electronic methods were more efficient.
Whirlwind Barrett Tillman 2010
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At night, with weather permitting, navigators could use sextants to “shoot the stars” with more accuracy than sun angles, and electronic methods were more efficient.
Whirlwind Barrett Tillman 2010
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Of instruments and apparatus for the sledge journeys we carried two sextants, three artificial horizons, of which two were glass horizons with dark glasses, and one a mercury horizon, and four spirit compasses, made in Christiania.
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We had in addition several sextants and artificial horizons, both glass and mercury.
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At Polheim, during a period of twenty-four hours (December 16 -- 17), observations were taken every hour with one of the sextants.
The South Pole~ The Astronomical Observations at the Pole 2009
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The instruments we carried were two sextants and three artificial horizons -- two glass and one mercury -- a hypsometer for measuring heights, and one aneroid.
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