| Angular measurements are made using sextants, theodolites, quadrants and station pointers. |
| Until recently, oceanographers gathered much of their data from solitary vessels that they navigated by means of stars and sextants. |
| And it's equally true now, even though satellites have taken over from sextants, the Sun and fixed stars as the navigation aids of choice. |
| Cook carried an early nautical almanac and brass sextants, but no chronometer on the first voyage. |
| On shelves and bookcases around the flat I could see antique spanners, old sextants, shiny brass things, burnished steel telescopes. |
| They had sextants, early microscopes, clocks, thermometers, and barometers. |
