Determinación de Coordenadas Geográficas por Métodos Astronómicos

This project methodologically demonstrates the application of equations used in spherical astronomy to determine the coordinates that give direction and origin to the works of geographic positioning, including elements such as; astronomical azimuth, astronomical direction, magnetic declination, as well as latitude and longitude of a point located on the Earth's surface. The measurements of the horizontal and vertical angles (heights and zenith distances) were made with a Zeiss Th2 mechanical optical theodolite and the times with a Nautica watch. The processing of field data was executed using a personal computer, equipped with 16 GB of RAM, a graphics card of 2GB, 1TB hard drive, and a Ryzen processor. The calculations were supported by astronomical values tabulated in the Astronomical Yearbook of the year 2004, published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Corrections for refraction, parallactic, and delta T were applied. Astronomical coordinates such as declination at the time of observation, equation of time, hour and parallactic angles, astronomical azimuth and direction, magnetic declination, latitude, and longitude were determined. In conclusion, the methodology developed allows determining the azimuth, direction, magnetic declination, latitude and longitude of points on the Earth's surface; however, special care must be taken with regard to instrumental and personal errors, since differences of 1' (one minute) in latitude and longitude represent linear distance errors greater than 2,500 meters. It is recommended that the subject of positional astronomy should not be removed from the study program of the topography engineering degree in any of its specialties and be included in the geomatics engineering curriculum, since this discipline serves to understand the new technologies of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems.