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 West Raleigh:
35.786818, -78.663893
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 West Raleigh
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 one communities that are also named West Raleigh.
Within North Carolina, the name West Raleigh is unique.
Beyond North Carolina, there is another community also named West Raleigh in the United States.
Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
West Virginia
Raleigh County
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 West Virginia community of West Raleigh [Raleigh County].
Curious and Interesting Names Near West Raleigh ...
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 & Almanacs that were published in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many of the Gazetteers include the distance from a community such as West Raleigh to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance<2> beginning in West Raleigh and extending to:
Raleigh, which is the Seat of Wake County, lies just to the East Southeast.
Raleigh, which is the State Capital of North Carolina, lies just to the east southeast (ESE).
The White House (Washington, DC) is 232 miles [373.4 km]<2> to the north northeast (NNE). If you could drive a straight line from West Raleigh 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 14 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 6,101 miles [9,818.6 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<5>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 6,796 miles [10,937.1 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<6>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 4,677 miles [7,526.9 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 Rock Creek to see Pete ... Rock Creek 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 West Raleigh 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 things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- West Raleigh) 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 West Raleigh 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 West Raleigh. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 35.7868, Longitude: -78.6639 In this case, the coordinates for West Raleigh have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 308.966 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 304.196 degrees.
<7>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 306.481 degrees.