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bearing — English
The direction of a place, point of reference or an object as measured by a compass from the vantage point of the observer. Bearing differs from azimuth in that bearing can never be more than 90° and can be measured from either north or south. When the observer must look in a northerly direction to see an object and measures the angle between the object and the north-south line to be 15° to the east of the north-south line, its bearing (that is, the direction one should follow to find it) is N 15° E. When the observer must look in a southerly direction to see the object and measures the angle between his/her sightline and the north-south line to be 35° to the west of south, the bearing of the object is located at S 35° W. To complicate matters, the observer has to take into account that true north (geographic north) and magnetic north do not coincide. Bearing can be taken from either the magnetic north-south line, or the geographic (or true) north-south line. If the direction of the object is measured with a compass, the magnetic north-south line is used and a correction must be made to find the actual location of the observed object. In order to do that, one must know what magnetic declination is (see “magnetic declination”). Twenty years ago one went into the wilderness with a compass and had to know basic navigation skills to establish exactly where you were; today one grabs a GPS and off you go – until the GPS’s battery runs down!
