Quote:
Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes
I guess I am lucky. I have my house plans and the coords and angles of the boundaries are marked on it. From this and a bit of high school trigonometry I was able to place a north/south string line right through the centre of my polar mount. Precision less than an arc minute, accuracy about 10 arc minutes!
If you use the sun and a plumb bob don't forget to check the actual time of the meridian pass for your particular location and if you are at a place where there is no shadow at noon make two passes one at 10 am and one at 2 pm and bisect the angle!
Barry
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Local solar noon +/- 3 or even 4 hours would give you a wider angle and longer shadows, both of which help you to improve the accuracy of the bisection.
Of course the method won't work in Sydney these days. No sun to cast shadows unless it's a work day and I'm in the office.
If there is some easily identified object you can see from the viewing ground you could use Google Earth to plot your yard and the object, work out the true bearing, and use that as a starting point.