The sun rises from east and sets in West.īecause of the Earth's axial tilt, no matter what the location of the viewer, there are only two days each year when the sun rises precisely due east. If they move clockwise, the sun will be in the south at midday, and if they move anticlockwise, then the sun will be in the north at midday.
In these locations, one needs first to determine whether the sun is moving from east to west through north or south by watching its movements-left to right means it is going through south while the right to left means it is going through north or one can watch the sun's shadows. Conversely, at low latitudes in the southern hemisphere the sun may be to the south of the observer in summer. between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn) since, in the northern hemisphere, the sun may be directly overhead or even to the north in summer. This method does not work very well when closer to the equator (i.e. In the middle of the day, it is to the south for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere, who live north of the Tropic of Cancer, and the north for those in the Southern Hemisphere, who live south of the Tropic of Capricorn. In the evening it sets in the west, again roughly and only due west exactly on the equinoxes. In the morning the Sun rises roughly in the east (due east only on the equinoxes) and tracks southward (or northward in the southern hemisphere). The position of the Sun in the sky can be used for orientation if the general time of day is known. This south magnetic pole of the earth located at an angle of 17 degrees to the geographic north pole attracts the north pole of the magnetic needle and vice versa. This is because the geographic north pole of the earth lies very close to the magnetic south pole of the earth. The north pole of the magnetic needle points toward the geographic north pole of the earth and vice versa. Magnetic compasses are widely used, but only moderately accurate.
A magnetic compass is a device that uses this field to determine the cardinal directions. The Earth has a magnetic field which is approximately aligned with its axis of rotation. Arbitrary horizontal directions may be indicated by their azimuth angle value. Points between the cardinal directions form the points of the compass. These eight shortest points in the compass rose shown to the right are: The intermediate direction of every set of intercardinal and cardinal direction is called a secondary intercardinal direction. The ordinal directions (also called the intercardinal directions) are northeast (NE), southeast (SE), southwest (SW), and northwest (NW).
Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at 90 degree intervals in the clockwise direction. The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. A compass rose showing the four cardinal directions, the four intercardinal directions, and eight more divisions.