almucantar staff

English

Noun

almucantar staff

1. (astronomy) An ancient instrument, having an arc of fifteen degrees, formerly used at sea to take observations of the sun's amplitude at the time of its rising or setting, to find the variation of the compass.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “almucantar staff”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)