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How can I determine the angle (degress/minutes) a heavenly body appears relative to my location?

Originally from ticket #5298.

I need to figure out how to determine the precise angle that any heavenly body appears at any given precise moment relative to my location. As an example, there is a book that was published in the 1990s which says that in the year 4 BC a person living in the region of southeastern Turkey (at approximately 36.8 latitude and 39.0 longitude) the star Alnitak in the belt of Orion "would have culminated at the meridian at 51 degrees 52 minutes." How can I double-check that using Starry Night? Or let's say that on the morning of Sept 20, 2017 I'm standing in Cairo Egypt at the top of the Great Pyramid and looking up at the sky and see the planet Venus and want to know what degrees and minutes it is up from my exact spot. How would I determine such things using Starry Night? Thanks so much for your help.

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3 comments

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    Keiron Smith

    Hi Eric,

     

    1.  Set your time and date and location.

    2.  Find your target object in the sky, right click on the object and select "center".

    3.  In the top right hand corner of the screen you have Gaze - which gives you information about the location of that object in the sky.  Click on Gaze to change the information provided.

    4.  You can also put your cursor "arrow" on the object and see (HUD) information about the object's celestial location listed.  To include more information with the HUD look in Fille --> Preferences ---> Cursor Tracking (HUD) <--- check the information you want included.

    5.  Select the Meridian from View (drop down menu) ---> <name> Guides.

     

    Does this help?

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    Eric Patterson

    I followed all of those directions and it does not appear that Alnitak was at 51 degrees 52 minutes at any time in the year 4BC.  Is there a way to find out when it will reach that point?  I attempted to do that using Gaze (entering 51 degrees 52 minutes) but all it did was recenter the screen at that altitude.

     

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    Dave Whipps

    Eric,

    One other thing you can do is right-click the object and select "Show Info..." That will open the Info pane on the left of your screen. There is a group called  "Position in the Sky." Open that group and you'll see the position in several different coordinate systems (including the "Local" or "Alt/Az" system, which is the one you want.)

    I set my position to the location you mentioned, and in 4 BC, Alnitak has an altitude of 48 degreed when it crosses the meridian. 

     

    What book are you looking at? Do they say how they made the calculation?

     

     

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