How to Find Your Latitude Using Polaris
Channel: Argos Open Tech
Date: 2023-06-25

"How to Find Your Latitude Using Polaris" by Household Science Projects

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Onh6cNj5-E

The entire globe is covered by a human made grid of latitude and longitude, latitude shows how far north or south you are, and longitude shows how eastern or western  you are. This system allows every single point on earth to have a unique set of coordinate. For example Manhattan is Latitude: N 40° 47.986585'  Longitude: W 73° 57.350464' in this experiment you will only be able to accurately determine the first number in the latitude so if you were doing this from Manhattan you would find that Polaris is 40° above the horizon. This method and others like it using the sun and stars were the way people had to navigate until the invention of the GPS.
*Warning* You can only do this experiment in the northern hemisphere because in the southern hemisphere Polaris will be below the horizon.

For help finding Polaris go to http://www.skymaponline.net/

To find actual longitude and latitude go to http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/

Produced in 2014 using iMovie