Whether using binoculars, a small telescope or the naked-eye, the Heavens-Above
website can help you to find your way around the night-time sky. In addition to detailed
sky charts, their website will help you find planets, asteriods, comets, satellites and their tracks across the sky.
To give accurate results, Heavens-Above requires the latitude and longitude of your location. As a starting point, when we link to Heavens-Above,
we pass this GPS location for Park Forest East:
30.486856, -91.054826
Once you're on the Heavens-Above website, you can improve its accuracy by giving a more precise longitude and latitude as your actual position.
Open the Heavens-Above website centered on Park Forest East
Bird Watching ...
We enjoy finding new spots for bird watching and we use the eBird website for local sighting reports and to help identify hotspots.
The eBird website is organized on a parish-by-parish basis. We have selected East Baton Rouge Parish as the starting point when you click on the link below:
Curious and Interesting Names Near Park Forest East ...
As we travel, we always see a community with a name that gives pause. While there are names which are interesting or familiar, some catch our attention or strike our fancy. We always wonder about such a name. If time permits and the community is not too far, we'll usually try to make a side-trip.
We spend a lot of time looking through Gazetteers that were published in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many of the Gazetteers include the distance from a community such as Park Forest East to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance<1> beginning in Park Forest East and extending to:
Baton Rouge, which is the State Capital of Louisiana, lies just to the west southwest (WSW).
The White House (Washington, DC) is 983 miles [1,582 km]<1> to the northeast (NE). If you could drive a straight line from Park Forest East to White House, with an average speed<2>of 63 miles [101.4 km] per hour, it would take most of two days to make the trip. A comfortable walk of 2.2 miles [3.5 km] per hour would take 56 days. A horse and buggy averaging 3.2 miles [5.1 km] per hour would take 39 days.
The shortest distance<3> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 6,875 miles [11,064.2 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<4>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 7,585 miles [12,206.9 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<5>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 5,462 miles [8,790.2 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<6>'
Footnotes ...
<1>
Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Park Forest East) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<2>
While we have tried to pick reasonable speeds, the rate of travel is very theoretical - obstacles like fences, hills, lakes, river crossings and rest stops have been ignored. When we say 'Days' of travel, we're assuming 8 hours of travel per day.
<3>
The shortest line can be visualized by stretching a string on a Globe from Point A to Point B - this is known as a Great Circle Route. Where you might expect the shortest route from Park Forest East to the Middle East to be East and South, the Great Circle Route actually lies to the North and East.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Park Forest East. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 30.4869, Longitude: -91.0548 In this case, the coordinates for Park Forest East have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 315.982 degrees.
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 311.553 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 312.525 degrees.