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 Barclay Square:
36.071171, -86.667775
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 Barclay Square
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 Davidson County as the starting point when you click on the link below:
Curious and Interesting Names Near Barclay Square ...
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 Barclay Square to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance<1> beginning in Barclay Square and extending to:
Nashville, which is the State Capital of Tennessee, lies just to the northwest (NW).
The White House (Washington, DC) is 562 miles [904.5 km]<1> to the east northeast (ENE). If you could drive a straight line from Barclay Square to White House, with an average speed<2>of 63 miles [101.4 km] per hour, it would take just over a day to make the trip. A comfortable walk of 2.2 miles [3.5 km] per hour would take 32 days. A horse and buggy averaging 3.2 miles [5.1 km] per hour would take 22 days.
The shortest distance<3> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 6,424 miles [10,338.4 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<4>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 7,142 miles [11,493.9 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<5>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 5,017 miles [8,074.1 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<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 drawn from Point A (ie- Barclay Square) 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 Barclay Square 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 Barclay Square. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 36.0712, Longitude: -86.6678 In this case, the coordinates for Barclay Square have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 313.722 degrees.
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 309.695 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 309.663 degrees.