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 Falls Church:
35.861817, -78.615836
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 Falls Church
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 county-by-county basis. We have selected Wake County as the starting point when you click on the link below:
We found three communities that are also named Falls Church.
Within North Carolina, the name Falls Church is unique.
Beyond North Carolina, we know of three communities that are located in the United States.
Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
Virginia
Alexandria City
We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Virginia community of Falls Church [Alexandria City].
Fairfax County
We found mention of this community, but have little information. For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Virginia community of Falls Church [Fairfax County].
Falls Church City
This Falls Church is located in Falls Church City and lies 223 miles [358.9 km]<2> to the north northeast of the Falls Church that is located in Wake County.
For more information, please visit our profile page for the Falls Church City community of Falls Church.
Curious and Interesting Names Near Falls Church ...
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 Falls Church to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance beginning in Falls Church and extending to:
Raleigh, which is the Seat of Wake County, lies just to the South Southwest.
Raleigh, which is the State Capital of North Carolina, lies just to the south southwest (SSW).
The White House (Washington, DC) is 226 miles [363.7 km]<2> to the north northeast (NNE). If you could drive a straight line from Falls Church to White House, with an average speed<3>of 63 miles [101.4 km] per hour, it would take nearly four hours to make the trip. A comfortable walk of 2.2 miles [3.5 km] per hour would take 13 days. A horse and buggy averaging 3.2 miles [5.1 km] per hour would take 9 days.
The shortest distance<4> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 6,096 miles [9,810.6 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<5>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 6,791 miles [10,929.1 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<6>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 4,672 miles [7,518.9 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<7>'
Footnotes ...
<1>
If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer.
Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Mile's to see Pete ... Mile's is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.
Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.
Also keep in mind that Falls Church could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.
<2>
Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Falls Church) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<3>
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.
<4>
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 Falls Church 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 Falls Church. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 35.8618, Longitude: -78.6158 In this case, the coordinates for Falls Church have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 308.936 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 304.174 degrees.
<7>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 306.438 degrees.