The Nautical Almanac

Roger has used the Fibonacci numbers as the pattern for the first fifteen selector buttons on the Lotus Jukebox. The Fibonacci generating pattern is for the previous two numbers to be added together to get the next number - so, for example, when you add 1 + 1, you get 2; when you add 1 + 2, you get 3, etc. The Fibonacci process seems to describe how space is 'filled' - and this concept will be added to, soon.

So to get the sixteenth Fibonacci number, you add the fourteenth (377) to the fifteenth (610) and you get 987 for the sixteenth. And that will suggest that September 1987 is the eclipse/equinox date. Roger commemorates this with another shortcut - ZBS-Lotus-610. So you can tell he was right chuffed with himself.

You will have to decipher the Roman numeral equivalent to 1987, and you will need to find out which day the equinox actually is - 22 or 23? (the September equinox can VERY occasionally be the 21st or 24th - but not in our lifetimes) - so you can guess the date, or look it up.

As a reward for getting this (easy) answer, you get to solve a hard one. Here is the setup, the "I was exactly overhead" reference is to the star "Vega" - AKA Alpha Lyrae.

Which sends us to the Nautical Almanac - a truly wonderful, romantic book. Here is a copy of it that presents how the used ones come. Notice it is beaten up, and lightly sprayed with salt water. These books have been on adventures! Extremely well bound, with the practical orange color so that it can be easily located in a crowded cabin. And so precious and important that two real, no-foolin' big boy pants governments are involved in producing them, and were doing it years in advance of the publishing date.

I was lucky - the local private university had these on the shelves, along with a copy of Dutton's Navigation and Piloting. We will get past a big hurdle next time.