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 Old Place:
40.630381, -74.185978
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 Old Place
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 Richmond County as the starting point when you click on the link below:
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 Old Place to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance<1> beginning in Old Place and extending to:
Albany, which is the State Capital of New York, lies 141 miles [226.9 km]<1> to the north (N). If you could drive a straight line from Old Place to Albany, with an average speed<2>of 63 miles [101.4 km] per hour, it would take less than three hours to make the trip. A comfortable walk of 2.2 miles [3.5 km] per hour would take 8 days. A horse and buggy averaging 3.2 miles [5.1 km] per hour would take 6 days.
The White House (Washington, DC) is 192 miles [309 km] to the southwest (SW). Driving would take a little over three hours, a buggy would take 8 days and walking would take 11 days.
The shortest distance<3> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 5,705 miles [9,181.3 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<4>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 6,411 miles [10,317.5 km] and it lies to the east northeast (ENE).<5>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 4,287 miles [6,899.3 km] and it lies to the east northeast (ENE).<6>'
Footnotes ...
<1>
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- Old Place) 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 Old Place 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 Old Place. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 40.6304, Longitude: -74.1860 In this case, the coordinates for Old Place have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 306.059 degrees.
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 301.636 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 302.779 degrees.