Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Where was my Moon?

A few months ago I took a random picture of the Moon using my Theodolite app (on iPhone 7 Plus), which records the date, time, azimuth/horizontal angle, and altitude/elevation angle, and thought I would check it against a couple of sources:


Mooncalc.org data for this date, time, and location


Yup, it's where it should be -- I'm pointed low and to the right a bit.

Stellarium

Moon - Az/Alt: +275°09'58.1"/+29°52'47.0" (apparent)

The Altitude is within a fraction of a degree, the Azimuth of my device isn't terribly accurate (it wiggles around actively) because it's based partially on the magnetic reading -- so it's off by maybe 3-4 degrees.

To get an accurate heading we need to align to the stars and that's just not built-into phones yet.  I'll be able to do it with my telescope pretty soon but I won't always have that with me -- but that should give me similar accuracy with heading measurements (if not better -- possibly down to a few arcseconds - but it depends upon the care with which I calibrate and align my telescope).

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Let me be clear that website is pure nonsense. Eric Dubay is a delusional fool and so is the blogger at that website it is that same recycled lies as before. Also take your nonsense elsewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Would you like to attempt to make a claim and back it up with evidence or you just here to spam links (which I'm pondering removing as spam).

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.