Hour Angle - Relation With The Right Ascension

Relation With The Right Ascension

The local hour angle (LHA) of an object in the observer's sky can be calculated

or

where LHAobject is the local hour angle of the object, LST is the local sidereal time, is the object's right ascension, GST is Greenwich sidereal time and is the observer's longitude (positive west from the prime meridian).

Thus, the object's hour angle indicates how much sidereal time has passed since the object was on the local meridian. It is also the angular distance between the object and the meridian, measured in sidereal hours (1h = 15°). For example, if an object has an hour angle of 2.5h, it crossed the local meridian 2.5 sidereal hours ago (i.e., hours measured using sidereal time), and is currently 37.5° west of the meridian. Negative hour angles indicate the time until the next transit across the local meridian. An hour angle of zero means the object is currently on the local meridian.

Read more about this topic:  Hour Angle

Famous quotes containing the words relation with the, relation with and/or relation:

    There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
    Umberto Eco (b. 1932)

    There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.
    Andrei Codrescu (b. 1947)

    A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.
    Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)