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).
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 8, 2017 at 2:19 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. AnonymousJuly 8, 2017 at 2:26 PM

    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. Dark StarJuly 13, 2017 at 9:39 AM

    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

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