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 Lake Smith:
36.890981, -76.167714
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 Lake Smith
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:
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 Lake Smith to various places of note, such as the White House.
With a nod to our favorite Gazetteers, the straight-line distance<1> beginning in Lake Smith and extending to:
Richmond, which is the State Capital of Virginia, lies 82 miles [132 km]<1> to the northwest (NW). If you could drive a straight line from Lake Smith to Richmond, with an average speed<2>of 63 miles [101.4 km] per hour, it would take less than two hours to make the trip. A comfortable walk of 2.2 miles [3.5 km] per hour would take 5 days. A horse and buggy averaging 3.2 miles [5.1 km] per hour would take most of three days.
The White House (Washington, DC) is 146 miles [235 km] to the north northwest (NNW). Driving would take less than three hours, a buggy would take 6 days and walking would take 9 days.
The shortest distance<3> to Jerusalem (specifically the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock) is 5,945 miles [9,567.6 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<4>
The distance to the Great Mosque of Mecca (specifically the Ka'bah - or Kaaba ) is 6,638 miles [10,682.8 km] and it lies to the east northeast (ENE).<5>
The distance to Saint Peter's Basilica (The Vatican) is 4,520 miles [7,274.2 km] and it lies to the northeast (NE).<6>'
Footnotes ...
<1>
Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Lake Smith) 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 Lake Smith 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 Lake Smith. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 36.8910, Longitude: -76.1677 In this case, the coordinates for Lake Smith have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Jerusalem is 307.504 degrees.
<5>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to Mecca is 302.693 degrees.
<6>
The calculated bearing (or angle) to the Vatican is 305.123 degrees.