Welcome to Comet Black. This comet is outside Pluto's orbit in TeamAstro's Solar System. Comet Black is 1341km from TeamAstro's Sun, located in the heart of Adelaide, South Australia.
This cache is part of TeamAstro’s journey through the Solar System. Other Solar System caches have been progressively released across Australia. The scale of TeamAstro's Solar System has been carefully calculated to reflect the distances between the planets and other Solar System objects. Your own geocaching tour of the Solar System will take you on an astronomical journey throughout Australia.
TeamAstro notes that this historic site permanently marks the original Astro Station established in 1887 by the Surveyor-General for the purpose of survey, based on the principle meridional circuit traverse, around the town of Blackall. The circuit around Blackall was XY miles square. (see the sign that used to be at the posted coordinates!) You can also use the artist name from 1993 on the new sign to find X and Y : X is number of letters in artist’s first name minus 1 ; Y is artist’s surname plus 3.
The Surveyors placed their theodolites here for latitude and longitude observations. The "object here", see pic, was used rather than a set of legs because the theodolites used on such observations were of a large size.
This Astro Station was used as part of the survey to fix the position of principle towns extending from Brisbane to Boulia via Roma, Charleville and Blackall. This was designed to establish the points of important centres with which the survey work of the whole colony could be connected and enable the mapping of Queensland on a more accurate basis. It was considered at the time that the country to the west of Blackall was ‘beyond the Black Stump’. GPS satellites would have been handy back then! They did it hard.
The cache can be found at S 24° 24.(X+4)(Y-3)(Y+2) E 145° 28.(X+2)(Y-2)(Y)
While in the area, try and visit the other ASTRO STATION at Charleville Cosmos Centre. You will get a great view of the heavens through their large reflecting telescopes.