NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Antoine Couëtte
Date: 2019 May 19, 04:13 -0700
ref : Astronomical-panorama-location-date-FrankReed-may-2019-g45005
No time to work on this nice game ... but at least this is how I would start tackling it:
Capella on the left, Aldebaran on the right with Pleiades over Aldebaran are telling us from which hemisphere the "picture" is taken. First guess is Northern hemisphere, but it definitely needs to be fully confirmed e.g. from a stars chart.
We can get a fairly reliable idea of the Sun RA from the Capella, Aldebaran and Merope positions, hence a good idea of the time in the year. Hence we can determine whether it is Sunset or Sunrise.
From Sun semi-diameter, altitudes of Aldebaran, Pleiades and Capella should enable getting a fair determination of Latitude : just perform a 3 height fix for sunset time or sunrise time as applicable and iterate as necessary.
From an Almanac stars chart it should be possible to pinpoint a possilbe "extra bright dot" to be identified as a Planet. From memorisation of a star chart, there is possibly such a planet lined up with the top of the Aldebaran "A" past Pleiades and almost on top of Capella. Its RA can then be guesstimated fairly easiy. Which Planet if any could have such an RA at this time of the year in the recent years (Preferably Saturn) should enable to determine the recent year of this "pseudo" picture.
Sorr not to dig up any further for the time being.
Nice exercise, Frank, thanks a lot.
Antoine
