At 07:58 30/06/03, you wrote: >Greetings all, >I know this is off topic but I didn't know what other group to pose this >question...What is the equivalent of Arc minutes to Km's or Degrees to >Km's. I just observed The Noss 2-3 triplet going through Ursa Major with my >binos and started to think if all three can fit in my field of view and my >field of view is 1.8 degrees in diameter and at the end of the pass the >leader and follower were just at the maximum of my field of view. How many >Km's apart would they be if I could translate degrees into Km's? I measured >angular separation between two of them (leader and follower) and came up >with around 1d and 41m. Russ, If you state angles in radians, rather than degrees, then size = distance * angle this formula makes use of the approximation that for small angles measured in radians sin(x) = tan(x) =x. It is a customised version of the trignometric formula size = distance *tan(angle). Radians are an angular measurement used in mathematics. The are two times pi of them in a circle, so to convert degrees to radians you divide by 57.295 ( 180 /pi) there are of course 3437.7 min of arc in a radian, so to convert minutes of arc to radians, divide by 3437.7. >That reminds me of a question someone asked me awhile back which was, which >state in the United States would fit nicely into the bowl of the big dipper? >The big dipper being 10d by 5d, it didn't appear to be that big for a state >to fit inside of it or am I wrong...I didn't know...anyone out there care to >take a stab? I think this is to do with shape rather than size. Tony Beresford ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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