GUIDANCE for BEGINNERS

All the timings of events presented in this section are based on the city of Ottawa. It is common for almanacs to be centred on the capital of the country for which they are designed. Purely celestial events happen at the same absolute time across the country. Since Canada is such a broad country, the time of celestial events must be corrected for your time zone, whether west of Ottawa (add hours) or east (subtract hours).

DETERMINING LOCAL TIME FOR LOCAL EVENTS

However, there are events that are associated with the local horizon or meridian that require additional time corrections based on your actual longitude and latitude. Here is the procedure.

Once you make the time zone correction fromthe number is negative. The entries are given for mid-month, so you may wish interpolate to specific days for more accurate values. If you are not in the city centre or at ground level, there will be additional errors due to interpolation of the data; however, these will be relatively small.