How to Use sextant in a Sentence
sextant
noun-
Yet here was a guy in harm’s way trying to find his way in a war zone with something about as easy to use as a sextant.
—Scott Canon, kansascity.com, 15 May 2017
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Note that with my DIY sextant (and most others), the string would point to a value on the protractor that is not the angle above the horizon.
—Rhett Allain, WIRED, 3 May 2018
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Sure, a protractor works, but a sextant does this even better.
—Rhett Allain, WIRED, 3 May 2018
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Long before the advent of GPS and too far north for his compass to be of much use, Maultsby used only a sextant and the stars to navigate, like a sailor from a bygone era.
—Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, 4 Sep. 2019
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Instead, long-distance sailing was done by relying on the position of stars and use of sextants.
—Danielle Rossingh, CNN, 13 Mar. 2018
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Back in 1940, partial human remains were found on Gardner near the remnants of a campfire, along with an empty sextant box and pieces of a woman's shoe.
—Paula McLain, Town & Country, 17 Jan. 2017
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The city is having a bit of fun with the sextant versus quadrant debate, by offering up a Twitter poll and selling T-shirts with the competing designations.
—oregonlive, 1 May 2020
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How precious are the signs of what these people actually did, whether open books or sextants or carpenter’s tools; the piano that graces a grave in the City of London, Hogarth’s tomb in Chiswick with his palette and brushes.
—1843, 21 May 2020
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The sextant was, however, designed to superimpose a pair of star images, could not be used to photograph objects, and, with a field of view only 1.8° wide, would require a highly skilled operator to spot an LM at all.
—David S. F. Portree, WIRED, 29 May 2012
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The sextant sailors used in the 18th century for celestial navigation had a telescopic attachment (which gave Popeye the Sailor his characteristic squint).
—Austin Grossman, The Atlantic, 13 Oct. 2019
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Other devices, like modern clocks, sextants for precise navigation, and much later modern computers, took their place.
—Laura Poppick, Smithsonian, 31 Jan. 2017
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There are also lots of smaller instruments—thermometers, sextants, astrolabes—and plenty of globes, as well as an enormous armillary sphere, designed and built by the Italian astronomer Antonio Santucci.
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 17 May 2020
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Thus, Portland is considering creating a sixth sextant.
—Andrew Theen, OregonLive.com, 28 Feb. 2018
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sextant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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