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txcat
Mar 11, 2008, 01:15 PM
I am taking an Astronomy class and this Lab is killing me. It is asking about Right Ascension and computing it to Hours:Minutes. If the Right Ascension is 326.0 degrees, how do I compute it to hours:minutes? I have looked on Google on how to solve this problem but I can't seem to find out how to do it. I would appreciate any help on how to solve this type of problem or where I can go to find out how to do it.

This is how I am feeling on my Spring Break by not figuring it out on my own. :eek:

Capuchin
Mar 11, 2008, 01:26 PM
Well, a whole circle (360 degrees) is 24 hours, each hour has 60 minutes, and each minute has 60 seconds.

It should be obvious how to convert them.

326/360 * 24 gives you the number of hours, in this case 21.733333 we round to 21 and use the remainder in the next step:

0.733333 * 60 gives you the number of minutes, in this case 44.

(we do the same thing again, taking the remainder and multiplying by 60 to find the seconds, but in this case the remainder is 0)

So 326 degrees is 21:44:00