17 August 2014

Ever since my iPad died and I lost that sun position program with trying to translate Az onto the local terrain I have been frustrated in attempts to locate exactly where I should look for a particular event. The compass programs in the phone and tablet, and likewise a real compass, have proved utterly useless as there is too much infrastructure around here for them to provide consistent or even repeatably inaccurate readings. In thinking about tomorrow morning's Venus/Jupiter conjunction I wondered if there might be a protractor program that would overlay over Google Maps to indicate over which part of the Tri-Borough Bridge I should look to find the planets although they should be bright enough to make their presence known unless it is too cloudy - a distinct possibility. Even on Android things are too sanboxed to do that but I did find the aptly named Protractor will let you measure angles on either a live camera image or a previously captured image. So now I can screen capture a Google Map and import it into the protractor program to make a measurement and save the annotated image to refer to in the field. The only down sides are that the program only works in portrait mode so the imported image is small and they put the saved image in a directory where other programs can't access it.

Mobile Observatory graphic

Mobile Observatory graphic

Mobile Observatory graphic

Google Maps graphic annotated with Protractor