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A diagram illustrating great-circle distance (drawn in red) between two points on a sphere, P and Q. Two antipodal points, u and v are also shown. The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance between two points on a sphere, measured along the great-circle arc between them. This arc is the shortest path ...
Vincenty relied on formulation of this method given by Rainsford, 1955. Legendre showed that an ellipsoidal geodesic can be exactly mapped to a great circle on the auxiliary sphere by mapping the geographic latitude to reduced latitude and setting the azimuth of the great circle equal to that of the geodesic.
A geodesic triangle on the sphere. A geodesic triangle is formed by the geodesics joining each pair out of three points on a given surface. On the sphere, the geodesics are great circle arcs, forming a spherical triangle. Geodesic triangles in spaces of positive (top), negative (middle) and zero (bottom) curvature.
Solving the geodesic equations is a procedure used in mathematics, particularly Riemannian geometry, and in physics, particularly in general relativity, that results in obtaining geodesics. Physically, these represent the paths of (usually ideal) particles with no proper acceleration , their motion satisfying the geodesic equations.
Geodesic polyhedra are constructed by subdividing faces of simpler polyhedra, and then projecting the new vertices onto the surface of a sphere. A geodesic polyhedron has straight edges and flat faces that approximate a sphere, but it can also be made as a spherical polyhedron (a tessellation on a sphere) with true geodesic curved edges on the ...
The relation remains valid for a geodesic on an arbitrary surface of revolution. A statement of the general version of Clairaut's relation is: [1] Let γ be a geodesic on a surface of revolution S, let ρ be the distance of a point of S from the axis of rotation, and let ψ be the angle between γ and the meridian of S. Then ρ sin ψ is ...
The great circle g (green) lies in a plane through the sphere's center O (black). The perpendicular line a (purple) through the center is called the axis of g, and its two intersections with the sphere, P and P ' (red), are the poles of g. Any great circle s (blue) through the poles is secondary to g. A great circle divides the sphere in two ...
The haversine formula determines the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere given their longitudes and latitudes. Important in navigation , it is a special case of a more general formula in spherical trigonometry , the law of haversines , that relates the sides and angles of spherical triangles.