The easiest constellation for me to find is Orion. We located Orion--hello old friend!-- and looked across the sky to where the big dipper was. So far, so good. Finding the little dipper proved to be more difficult. The six ancient oaks in our back yard did not help matters. Nor did the new sensor light the neighbors installed behind their garage.
We could see stars through the trees, but the view was so broken up by the inescapable branches, we could not be sure the star we were focusing on was indeed Polaris. I'm disappointed with myself for setting such expectations for this experiment with the Artist and then not being able to fulfill them.
The Artist got a latitude reading of 38º with her self-calibrated meter.
Not too bad. Cleveland, Ohio is actually 41.30º (or 41.49º according to a different web site. It was too much to ask for two sources to agree).The 3 - 3.5 degrees error the Artist's meter gave are just fine with me. We will not be orienteering with this meter, after all. I can see where fractions of the difference can occur with her hand-penciled calibrations, the site not aligning perfectly with the pointer, and that nagging doubt that were sighting the right star to begin with.
Perhaps she can try again from the local school yard one night or from her Papa's house. The view will be better in either place. From Papa's house she would have the help of an astronomy expert to boot!
1 comment:
What a fun experiment!
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