Course (navigation)

In navigation, an object's course is the direction over the ground along which the object is currently moving.

Course, track, route and heading

The line connecting the object's consecutive positions on the ground is referred to as the ground track. The track the object was intended to follow is called the route. For ships and aircraft, the route is represented by the great circle line that connects the previous waypoint with the next waypoint. The responsibility of a navigator is to make the track coincide as much as possible with the route. The direction of the route is called the route course. "Course" exceptionally, and arguably erroneously, may also refer to the route, such as in a course deviation indicator, in which case it no longer constitutes an angle but rather a line. The direction of the great circle line that runs from the current position to the next waypoint is called the course to steer, or the bearing to that waypoint. The tracking angle is the angle between the course to steer and the course. The heading is the direction to which the "nose" of the object is pointing, its orientation.

Course

Course can refer to:

Navigation

Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation.

It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. All navigational techniques involve locating the navigator's position compared to known locations or patterns.

Navigation, in a broader sense, can refer to any skill or study that involves the determination of position and direction. In this sense, navigation includes orienteering and pedestrian navigation. For information about different navigation strategies that people use, visit human navigation.

History

In the European medieval period, navigation was considered part of the set of seven mechanical arts, none of which were used for long voyages across open ocean. Polynesian navigation is probably the earliest form of open ocean navigation, though it was based on memory and observation rather than on scientific methods or instruments. Early Pacific Polynesians used the motion of stars, weather, the position of certain wildlife species, or the size of waves to find the path from one island to another.