ES 1300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cartesian Coordinate System, Antarctic Circle

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alyssacardella

15 Sep 2021

School

Kean University

Department

Meteorology

Course

ES 1300

Professor

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Document Summary

Latitude and longitude- finding your location on a sphere. When you are locating a point on a flat surface you can use cartesian coordinates of x and y. Ona body such as the earth or our moon, we can pinpoint the location of any city or landmark using two values, the latitude and longitude. On the earth there are two additional sets of reference points. The equator divides the earth into the northern and the southern hemisphere. The primes meridian divides the earth into the western and eastern hemisphere. Latitude is defined as the elevation of the location point above (or below) the equator. The measurement is expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds. The equator is at 0 degrees and the poles are at 90 degrees. If the location point is north of the equator n or + is added to the degrees.

Related Questions

This problem is an elaboration of Example 7 on page 611 of the textbook.

Assuming that the earth is a sphere of radius 3960 miles, Salt Lake City is located at 40.8 degrees North and 111.9 degrees West, and San Francisco is located at 37.8 degrees North and 122.4 degrees West, the great circle distance between Salt Lake City and San Francisco is ( ) miles.

Assuming that Sydney in Australia is located at 33.9 degrees South and 151.2 degrees East, and that you are flying from Salt Lake City to Sydney on a great circle course at 600 miles per hour, it will take you ( ) hours to get there.

The greatest great circle distance between any two points on earth is ( ) miles.

The antipodal point of Salt Lake City (i.e., the far point at which a line from Salt Lake City through the center of the earth pierces the surface of the earth) has a latitude of ( ) degrees( ) (enter North or South) and a longitude of( ) degrees ( ) (enter East or West).

Note: the geographic coordinates were taken from the internet, and were rounded to one tenth of one degree. Recall that ww expects your answers to be within one tenth of one percent of what it has been given as the correct answer. To be sure you want compute your answers, based on the data given here, a little more accurately than ww requires

Astronomy Parallax Lab

SCENARIO: Your lab group is planning an expedition to measure the distance to Mars by carefully measuring its position in the sky from two locations simultaneously when it is next at “opposition” (that is, when it is exactly opposite from the sun in the sky) on October 13, 2020. For the best, and most straightforward distance determination with the parallax method, Mars should be high in the sky (as near to your zenith as possible). This can be done by observing Mars: (a) from locations whose LATITUDES are similar to the DECLINATION of Mars at the date of measurement and (b) at the time of night when Mars is highest in the sky.

1a). Determine the Sky Coordinates of Mars on the date of opposition. The relevant coordinate is the Declination (RA/DE J2000 coordinates should be used) – this is the sky coordinate analogous to Latitude on the Earth’s surface. (Note, it is ok to determine these coordinates for Mars from anywhere on Earth for this initial measurement)

Mars DECLINATION on October 13, 2020: ___________________________

Your lab team needs to send observers to two cities that:

(a) have latitudes that are similar to the declination of Mars on that date (within 20 degrees); and

(b) have nearly the same longitude (that is, are nearly due North-South from each other (hint, you will need to go close to the equator!).

1b). Choose two of the cities below and use google maps, google earth or another online resource to record their names and Latitudes.

Melbourne, Australia	Kampala, Uganda	Tokyo, Japan
Omaha, NE, USA	Mumbai, Italy	Khartoum, Soudan

1c). At what time should you measure the sky coordinates (right ascension and declination) to get the most accurate possible parallax distance?

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ES 1300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cartesian Coordinate System, Antarctic Circle

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