Decorative Sextant

Decorative piece with sextant, an old instrument for seafarers. With the sextant, seafarers could determine their position on earth (stigma) and used it mainly on the open sea.

Old navigators determined the position of their ship by measuring the angles formed by the celestial bodies, i.e., the Sun, Moon, or stars, with the horizon. The first instruments used to measure these angles were astrolabes. The device that replaced astrolabes was the sextant.