ASIMUT-1073 - web 2.JPG


Altazimuth, 014

The Fram Museum’s altazimuth was used by Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen on their North Pole journey in 1895, after they had left the Fram, which was frozen in the polar ice at 84 degrees north. The instrument has a wooden container. An altazimuth is a device for measuring altitude and azimuth. The word comes from 'altus' in Latin meaning hill and 'ass-sunûth' that means way in Arabic. It is often called a universal instrument because it replaces several instruments (quadrant, theodolite, transit instrument). Azimuth is the angle of a vertical circle that a celestial body forms with the meridian. A celestial body can be the sun, a star and so forth. Astronomers and sailors usually find azimuth from north to east from 0 to 360 degrees), which is the same as the true bearing of the navigation tables. An altazimuth consists of a pair of binoculars that can be rotated about a vertical axis and a horizontal axis. Ref.: Norwegian Encyclopedia,, Kaare Aksnes, 20-12-08


Roald Amundsen

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