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 Blue Hills:
37.298748, -79.923372
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 Blue Hills
Waymarking ...
Looking for somewhere out of the ordinary? Find a unique place and want to share it with others? Then it's time to visit Waymarking.com:
We found six communities that are also named Blue Hills.
Within Virginia, the name Blue Hills is unique.
Beyond Virginia, we know of six communities that are located in the United States and Canada. Of these six communities, four are located in the United States and two are in Canada.
Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
British Columbia
This Blue Hills lies 2,306 miles [3,711.1 km]<1> to the northwest.
California
Santa Clara County
This Blue Hills is located in Santa Clara County and lies 2,293 miles [3,690.2 km]<1> to the west northwest.
For more information, please visit our profile page for the Santa Clara County community of Blue Hills.
Connecticut
Hartford County
This Blue Hills is located in Hartford County and lies 494 miles [795 km]<1> to the northeast.
For more information, please visit our profile page for the Hartford County community of Blue Hills.
Massachusetts
Norfolk County
This Blue Hills is located in Norfolk County and lies 579 miles [931.8 km]<1> to the northeast.
For more information, please visit our profile page for the Norfolk County community of Blue Hills.
Mississippi
Claiborne County
We found mention of this community, but have little information.<2> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Mississippi community of Blue Hills [Claiborne County].
Quebec
This Blue Hills lies 660 miles [1,062.2 km]<1> to the north northeast.
Curious and Interesting Names Near Blue Hills ...
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 & Directories that were published in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many of the Gazetteers include the distance from a community such as Blue Hills to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance beginning in Blue Hills and extending to:
Richmond, which is the State Capital of Virginia, lies 137 miles [220.5 km]<1> to the east (E). If you could drive a straight line from Blue Hills to Richmond, with an average speed<3>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 191 miles [307.4 km] to the northeast (NE). Driving would take a little over three hours, a buggy would take 8 days and walking would take 11 days.
The shortest distance<4> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 6,089 miles [9,799.3 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<5>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 6,794 miles [10,933.9 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<6>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 4,671 miles [7,517.2 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<7>'
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- Blue Hills) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<2>
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 Blue Hills 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 . 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.
<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 Blue Hills 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 Blue Hills. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 37.2987, Longitude: -79.9234 In this case, the coordinates for Blue Hills have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 309.661 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 305.215 degrees.
<7>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 306.486 degrees.