Roved up a mountain: would like a height check

SillySMS

S
So, recently, I landed on the icy moon Blaa Phoe AQ-M B9-18 1F, and roved up a fairly tall mountain, almost to the tallest peak.

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My question is: how high is this peak? I did an estimation using a bit of simple trig (which ignored the curvature of the moon), and came up with a gross over-estimate of 17 km. I know approximately how long it took to descend from the peak (18 minutes), and I was definitely not roving that fast downhill.

Peak location: 69.0394, 172.2395

Reference location: 69.9308, 169.7797

Angle from reference location to peak: 11 degrees above horizon

Also, if FDev would add a high-precision readout of either distance-to-center or altitude-above-reference-level somewhere on the rover, I would be very appreciative.
 

bnrgator

B
Was thinking you could fly your ship to the peak, but the altimeter behaves like a radar altimeter and always gives altitude above ground. You could estimate by flying to the level of the peak (eye ball it) while not over the mountain.
 

SillySMS

S
bnrgator said:
Was thinking you could fly your ship to the peak, but the altimeter behaves like a radar altimeter and always gives altitude above ground. You could estimate by flying to the level of the peak (eye ball it) while not over the mountain.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion; I think I'd roughly estimated it at 7 km that way, but when your reference point is about 2.6 degrees of angular distance off from the peak, you start to get some issues regarding the horizon and the curvature of the planet. The same things have messed up the simplistic trigonometry-based estimate.

My guess is it's between 3-8 km high just based on things like how long it took to rove down the mountain at the end, but the curvature of the moon is screwing up the simple trig and I'm trying to get a more accurate estimate based on the measurements I made in my ship.
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
dayrth
Problem would be deciding what to measure the height against. No sea level to use as a base. The mountain may be sitting on a high plain or in a deep depression.
 
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Dan Bender

Dan Bender
Can you show a wing signal to distant SRV or landed ship? If you can, and you bring a friend, you can detirmine the elevation.at any two points:

1) Land one player at the POI, the other at any other location.
2) Use both your coordinates to determine your angular separation along the local great circle (angle measured at the center of body). I'm not going to present the math for that; I don't know it off the top of my head.
3) determine your friend's elevation (the angle you measured earlier). Add 90 degrees; you want the leg-to-leg angle, NOT the leg-to-horizon.
4) You now can calculate the third angle of the triangle because a1 + a2 + a3 = 180 degrees.
5) Find the distance to your friend's wing signal. You now know all three angles and the length of one leg.
6) Calculate the distance to the center of the body at either or both points using the law of sines.

This is basically surveying. And if you have very precise measurements, you can calculate these altitudes very accurately.
 
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