Friday, February 9, 2007

Where in the World is Angel Falls?

Uncle Bob blew the air out of my sails by confirming that the coordinates I found on Wikipedia are the same as he got from Google. Well, we already went by those last April and, as near as I can tell, we were too far West and South -- by at least a mile (one minute of latitude or longitude near the equator is equivalent to one nautical mile).

Can anyone out there suggest another source for the coordinates of Angel Falls? I have searched the Venezuela website but they are more interested in enviegling tourists into their "spider webs" than giving out any information useful to a transient flying over at 12,000 feet.

Posted by Great Grumpy Z. at 14:13
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4 comments:

  1. Amboy Observer10 February, 2007 09:49

    I used Google Earth to get this picture:
    http://picasaweb.google.com/ZimFam/Destinations/photo#5029963033276272226

    I've put the most accurate coordinates it could give me in the caption of the picture.

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  2. Great Grumpy Z.11 February, 2007 12:33

    James: Did you get those coordinates from Google or Wikipedia or did you somehow measure them yourself?

    The coordinates you provided are but .01 arcsecond different than the ones Uncle Bob and I have -- both of our data come from Google/Wikipedia sites. We believe those are in error by about 1 arcminute.

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  3. Amboy Observer12 February, 2007 18:33

    I went to Google Earth, which I downloaded to my PC. I searched for Angel Falls and it had preloaded that destination. I got the coordinates by hovering my mouse over the center of icon labelled Angel Falls.
    What I was really hoping for was a very clear photo of the falls that would make it easy to visually confirm the presence of the falls. However it was much too blurry and perhaps covered with clouds for that to work.

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  4. Great Grumpy Z.13 February, 2007 19:04

    So, James, the coordinates you got were ones generated by Google, not independent ones you measured. Darn!

    I agree that zooming in on Google Earth image (the only one I found) is not fruitful in that, 1) If you zoom in too far, you get a message that there is no data up that close, and 2) The image gets blurry and the clouds coming up from the Falls look the same as the clouds created by the gentle flow of moist marine air flowing westward from off the Caribbean/Atlantic Oceans.

    Looking straight down on a 3,000-plus waterfall (as the satelllite view is) does not make for a very verifiable locator!!

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