Can air pollution affect the observed positions of stars? I live in a big suburban area where pollution is quite high, and I have been testing a sextant by measuring the angle between pairs of stars. I compared the measured angle with the one obtained from ephemerides, where the latter takes account of the alteration of the body altitude due to refraction in the atmosphere.
For instance, I measured the angle between Castor and Pollux, both at apparent altitudes of ~ 39 degrees.
The comparison works pretty well, but the sextant appears to systematically overestimate the angle by ~ 1'. Can the air pollution in my area (not light pollution) alter the refraction index of the surrounding air mass and thus be responsible for this discrepancy?
Thanks!
The air pollution has a negligible effect on the refraction, because pollution barely affects the air density.
However, the refraction is proportional to the air pressure and inversely proportional to the air temperature in Kelvin. So different weather conditions or ground elevations will result in different refraction values.