What is the azimuth and altitude of the star procyon?

The azimuth and altitude of any celestial body depend on the precise time and date, and on the observer's location.

I live in a suburb of Sacramento, CA, and the time right now is May 7, 2011 at 4:31PM Pacific Daylight Time. Procyon is, at this moment, at an altitude of 52 degrees 36 minutes, and an azimuth of 149 degrees 18 minutes; a little east of south. It is at a distance of 11.41 light years. Like most celestial objects, it tracks to the west at about 4 degrees per minute.

I get this data from the free planetarium program Stellarium, available at stellarium.org. If you download this program and program it with your exact location, you can get up-to-the-second calculations for yourself.

However, we don't generally refer to stars by azimuth and elevation; instead, we use the more common measurements of Right Ascension and Declination, numbers that do not change measurably over the span of a century. According to Wikipedia, Procyon is at:

Right ascension

07h 39m 18.1/17.7s

Declination

+05° 13' 29/20"