NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2014 Jun 21, 04:56 -0700
Peter Monta, you wrote:
"The EXIF header gives 2014-06-18 10:42:46 PM, which would be local time I guess. "
Aha. Thanks. Given that this is a (recent model) smartphone photo, I think we can probably trust the time to within one second. So given previous stories from Norm that he's in the Bay Area, we can assume Pacific Time. Also assuming that the orbit of the ISS has not changed too much in three days, we can narrow things down pretty quickly. The ISS would have been in that position relative to the pointer stars of the Big Dipper at 10:42:46 PM PDT from a location of 37.40° N, 122.09° W. That's in Mountain View, CA, which, if I recall, Peter, isn't far from your location last time we played this satellite fix game. Given the various uncertainties from eyeballing the image and other factors, I would trust this position to +/-0.05° or +/-3 nautical miles. So Norm, how close are we?
-FER
PS: And I'll mention once again, that this sort of visual satellite observation can be the easiest form of modern celestial navigation.