Questions tagged [coordinate]
Questions on systems to uniquely determine position of a point or other geometric element on a manifold such as Euclidean space.
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Why objects are uniquely defined by their right ascention and declination?
I've just started studiyng Astronomy.
I understood how I would measure Right Ascention and Declination: for the first one I'd trace an Hour cirlce to the Celestial Equator, and then, compute the ...
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How do I find the RA of sunset and sunrise in a specific location?
I want to make some observations with a telescope in Hawaii on Mauna Kea but I am living somewhere else (not Hawaii) and I want to plan a night's viewing on the Hawaiian telescope. How do I find the ...
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Calculation of Horizontal Coordinates
Given a fixed coordinate location on Earth (i.e. a latitude and longitude), and a fixed equatorial coordinate location of a particular astronomical object in the sky (i.e. right ascension and ...
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Calculate telescope orientation based on RA, DEC and Lat/Long
I'm parsing FITS files for a project based on data from a telescope. These files include 'DEC', 'RA' and lat long values. I understand roughly the concept of celestial coordinates and I assume that ...
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Why is right ascension measured in hours?
When viewing star maps in Stellarium, I noticed that the meridians of the equatorial grid were denoted in hours and not degrees, and that always puzzled me. Why did astronomers choose this system? I ...
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how steady over time are right ascension and declination values?
I understand that astronomers use right ascension and declination for the position of stars. However both these values strike me as very anthropocentric and, more importantly, unreliable over time as ...
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How are East and West defined on other bodies of our solar system?
I noticed that East and West appear swapped on maps of the Sun, even though the Sun rotates around its polar axis in the same sense as Earth.
See for example below Sun disk with a Venus transit ...
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Do stars of a galaxy change their positions relatively to each other?
Complete astronomy noob over here who would be happy if he get a simple answer (and who is also aware that this may be not possible)...
I've learned from a tv documentary that the stars at the edge ...
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What are angular sizes of thin and thick disks in our Galaxy?
What are diapasons of galactic coordinates for thin and thick disks of our Galaxy?
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Convert coordinates between RA/dec and WGS 84 (SRID=4326)
I've imported the HYG Database from http://www.astronexus.com/node/34 and now I need to convert all RA/dec stars positions to fit in a WGS 84 coordinates (SRID=4326) PostGIS map (-180 to 180, 90 to -...
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Calculate latitude and longitude based on date and sun
I can't seem to find this algorithm, if it exists. Can you calculate the longitude and latitude of where you are standing based on the date and the angle of the sun? Also, would the algorithm work for ...
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Coordinate transformations between reference frames in spherical astronomy
Suppose there are two observational frames of reference with origins $O$ and $O'$, respectively, separated by some constant distance. A body located at point $P$ has Cartesian coordinates $\left(x,y,z\...
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Could someone explain RA/dec in simple terms?
The equatorial coordinate system isn't too complicated. However, for people new to this, it seems rather intimidating at first.
Is there an easy way to explain it?
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