Who said anything about time?
I've kind of kept out of this one Mr Looking, but I get the sense that you "just don't get it". This is not cookie cutter stuff you're asking, and many experienced and knowledgeable professionals have offered some pretty valid points as to "why" it is not.
I don't know if anybody has suggested this, but have you tried CORPSCON on the NGS website. Awesome tool to convert lat/long to SPC's, or vice versa. You have to do the rest to bring to ground and/or a local datum. Just plug in numbers and see what happens. It won't blow up your computer, but you may just get a clue. At a minimum some rationale as to why to hire an expert.
You keep reminding me of when I one time tried to train a basset hound to stay in the yard (unfenced). She was doing pretty good until that one day the rascally rabbit ran across the road. The rabbit made it, but the stupid basset didn't. Too bad really, fun dog. Tried a beagle once but just gave up and gave him away to a bigger rabbit hunter than me, and he just penned him up with his other 2. Then there is training any cat. I won't even bring up how my ex-wife tried to train me, along with a whole bunch of ex-gal pals. Key word ex.
Hope you find your mystery spot....
Have you compared the distances between the "bullseyes" to the distances you can calculate from the coordinates?
You can do that with the numbers you already have for the sizes of a unit of latitude and longitude. Plane geometry is close enough for 25 acres. Or you can use NGS program INVERSE, results in meters, multiply by 3.28083 to get feet. (I think grid to ground is negligible for his purposes.)
Do those distances check out to the accuracy you think you need?
If so, then you can calculate distance from each of the 8 found points to the 9th point. Mark out an arc from each one on the ground across the approximate location, and see how consistent their intersections are. If they consistently intersect in the same spot, then time to get out the shovel.
If they aren't consistent, then no amount of high-tech coordinate measurement is going to do any better, unless you find it difficult to make good distance measurements.
thank you JerryS...finally someone sees what im trying to say...sorry i dont know all the magical words ya'll use i may could have made it easier to understand...yes, a distance across a coordinate to the .000...now if you do this on the latitude and the longitude, at an exact coordinate, you have an area, probably semi-rectangular looking in shape, would i be correct in this assumption ? and if so, can it be located/marked with relative accuracy ? without anything other than the set of coordinates, and the other sets from previous dig points if that will help...
well wayne g its like this...i have asked if it is possible..ive been told yes, no, maybe, only with more info, only with all info, called a troll, even an idiot,etc, etc, all here, on one surveying forum..some say only with all this and all that might could get you reasonably close, others its a push of the button and its done....i'm just trying to find out what the deal is..personally i would think it could be accomplished with relative ease but i'm not a surveyor, nor a mathmetician...thats the reason i came here..always figured best to go to the horses mouth, only thing is i get all this info i can't understand like being told a crossing point of an exact set of coordinates is a point and has no measurable distance which is also quite incorrect as there is measurable distance across latitude lines and longitude lines so at a crossing point there is an area within......
oh and 27 ft is perfect....
only thing is i get all this info i can't understand like being told a crossing point of an exact set of coordinates is a point and has no measurable distance which is also quite incorrect as there is measurable distance across latitude lines and longitude lines so at a crossing point there is an area within......
very interesting
This has been said several times, but the latitude/longitude coordinate is from a zero-longitude line that may have been a different place on the earth in 1870 as used by your scientists and engineers, than it is today. We mentioned in the previous thread how this resulted in several miles difference between the recorded longitude for the Colorado/NM/Arizona/Utah corner to today's zero/zero lines. The Zero Latitude has probably always been at the theoretical equator. But also warp-age occurs due to different ellipsoid models used at the time as opposed to today. Today we do not consider the shape of the earth a sphere, but more like an oblate spheroid (shorter distance from pole-to-pole than the radius (diameter actually) at the equator. So the spherical coordinates would introduce another layer of lesser precision if the exact model isn't known.
We, probably most every surveyor on this site, have the ability to get to an accurate lat/long, but it is dependent on the datum and zero-station used to get there.
I am trying to explain it as well as I can, but you appear to gloss over any such explanations. That might be due to the ability to communicate it well enough (I don't know).
You DO NOT understand coordinates. A Latitude and Longitude pair of coordinates define a precise point with no width in either direction. Based on your most recent posts what you need to ask for when you call in the professional is to layout upon the ground a box. The box being defined by tolerances where rounding of the coordinates of the corners of the box provided will not change the significant digit.
> Needs to be expressed to five decimal places to be pinpoint.
>
> Still, 27 feet puts you in a fairly confined neighborhood.
Jerry, one missing element here is latitude. Longitude gets closer the further North you go. Not to mention height (elevation). Around here in AZ at 4,000 ft (around 35 deg N), one second of lon is about 100 ft, so I guess 3 decimals is about 30 ft. Close enough to find a fat lady singing since the party is over. Never played this game back in Northern MI, but I bet it's less. I don't think the lat makes much difference wherever you are, but could be wrong. Dunno, I just measure what I have and figger' it out.
Happy Halloween Beerleggers.... it's gonna happen before ya know it. I'm wearing an orange shirt and a plumb bob and muddy boots. Take your kids and show how them how to have some real fun 🙂
> that would be okay...i'd probably go right along with it..the dig would prove easily right or wrong..
If I located a lat and long for you I could certify its precision based on my datum. Your thinking that it is "right" if you find your treasure and "wrong" if you don't find your treasure shows that you are not understanding what has been being presented.
He was asking for an exact match to 0.001 minute. One minute is 6 feet of latitude, or 5 feet (in NC) of longitude.
The latitude and longitude determine a point of zero size. The uncertainty of rounding defines a 6x5 rectangle centered on that point.
A modern measurement might add a fraction of an inch to that size. Some of us expect the uncertainty of the old measurement and its translation to a modern framework may be far worse than that.
Just hire a surveyor to figure it out, if you got 8 points already with reasonable accuracy and the 9th the point is related to the other eight , most surveyors can find the other with gps and total station . It's only going to be precise if the original information is precise .its not magic it's math. We understand you do not understand the bits and pieces we use to go about our business . It's not a flat piece of paper as I tell the young engineers when they say it's this easy it should only take this long.
You come on here and ask for help giving no information other than subtle hints and then feel offended when you get poked a little.
If you want help give the info up. You may not wanted to be a troll but it's turning out that way.
By the way this is not a professional site this where we go shoot the chit and shop talk.
no i do not understand..when i research latitudes and longitudes i see that there is measurable distance across them, the more numbers, the less to measure..so, 69 miles, 101 ft, 27 ft, whatever...its measurable...if you go to a location with your gps, say 22.22.222N/22.22.222W and stop dead when the last numbers become 222, you can walk many feet further before the gps will change to 223...do this on the longitude line and the latitude line and you have an area you can mark...maybe that makes it easier to see what im trying to say.....and the exact center of this would be your precise coordinate center point with measureable distance in all four directions...not trying to gloss anything just trying to make sense of whats not making sense....
not offended a bit friend just trying to figure it all out...i well understand i seem like an idiot here where i do not really belong...i came here mainly to answer two or three questions..i guess they have been answered although i got all kinds of different type answers..no problem...thank you all..i appreciate the help..
As I said in a post above ...
A latitude and longitude determine a point of zero size. If you are looking at a display with 0.001 minute resolution, then due to rounding there is a 6x5 foot rectangle centered on that point that will display the same value.
That doesn't mean all points in the rectangle have the same latitude and longitude. Each point in that rectangle has a different latitude and longitude pair, but the display can't show the difference. A professional GPS will display latitude and longitude to a precision corresponding to a small fraction of an inch.
Were your latitude and longitude numbers straight out of the document in the form 36.00.123 79.32.250, or did you have to do any arithmetic on them to get your numbers to match the format you expected for your recreational GPS?
If your original document gave numbers to 0.001 minute, then that would imply that the author could not determine a location to better than a few feet. It could be that they could not determine to better than many feet, but carried extra precision beyond the accuracy they expected to minimize rounding error. If they had the capability to determine to better accuracy, they should have indicated so by giving more digits, even if those trailing digits were zeros.
The difficulty would not be locating the latitude and longitude your information and deductions have produced. That can be done with precision.
The issue is knowing how that lat/long coordinate was derived in the first place. The latitude could have been determined with pretty good precision by astronomical observation. But it is much more challenging to determine longitude by astronomical observation because the time element is of more significant magnitude, as has been stated by others.
So while it may be possible to locate the coordinates that you have with good precision based on current datums, that likely will not coincide precisely with the referent that a lat/long calculated in the 1800's would have been based on.
But if the other points you have already located were derived from positions whose locations were similarly derived, then using survey grade GPS to compare the positions of the points you have already located using the information you have. In other words, compare the lat//long from your research with the lat/long from GPS derived positions.
If all your points are located based on the same reference system, this would allow you to calculate what the position should be in the current realizations.
> if not mistaken, minutes and seconds, in relation to coordinates, are a measurement of distance not of time..
No they are a measure of angle with the point of the angle at the center (as defined by the datum used) of the earth. Have taught this difference to many in basic surveying classes.
Each latitude is defined by three points, one at the equator, one at the center of the earth and one at the point to be located. Longitude is also defined by three points, one on the ZERO meridian, one at the center of the earth and the point to be located. The distances you keep quoting are between ends of the angle lines. That distance at a specific area will vary with the elevation above or below sea level.
EDITS ARE IN BOLD ITALLICS: The distances we keep quoting are the ERROR in location and there are two involved with latitude and longitude defined locations. One error is in a north/south direction the other is in an east/west direction. The combination of the two error values forms an elliptical shape. The true location can be anywhere within the ERROR ELLIPSE while it is more likely to be near the center.
Well, you keep talking about precise coordinates, but 3 decimal places on the lats and longs are not precise. Carry your examples out to 5 decimal places, then you are getting precise, more precise than they were likely able to achieve in the 1800's. Otherwise, all you have is an approximate location based on a likely imprecise method of achieving it. Once you realize that, you'll get the gist of what everybody is trying to tell you.
A line of lat or long is precise with no width, where they cross is an exact point. The methods of determining that exact point have improved over the years. Where they thought that exact point was years ago will most likely not agree with where it can be located now.
Graphic Example
Mr. Looking 4 a point please review the graphic at this link that it takes both a latitude and a longitude to find a point on the Earth.
Latitude is an angle usually measured in degrees minutes and seconds. Longitude is an angle also usually measured in degrees minutes and seconds.
