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Geodesics on the sphere are great circles, circles whose center coincides with the center of the sphere. Any two distinct points on a sphere that are not antipodal (diametrically opposite) both lie on a unique great circle, which the points separate into two arcs; the length of the shorter arc is the great-circle distance between the points.
Its arc length is the great-circle distance between the points (the intrinsic distance on a sphere), and is proportional to the measure of the central angle formed by the two points and the center of the sphere. A great circle is the largest circle that can be drawn on any given sphere. Any diameter of any great circle coincides with a diameter ...
4.1.1 Great circles on Earth. ... Arc length is the distance between two points along a section of a curve. ... is the length of an arc of the circle, ...
A side (regarded as a great circle arc) is measured by the angle that it subtends at the centre. On the unit sphere, this radian measure is numerically equal to the arc length. By convention, the sides of proper spherical triangles are less than π , so that 0 < a + b + c < 2 π {\displaystyle 0<a+b+c<2\pi } (Todhunter, [ 1 ] Art.22,32).
The longitude on the ellipsoid and the distance along the geodesic are then given in terms of the longitude on the sphere and the arc length along the great circle by simple integrals. Bessel and Helmert gave rapidly converging series for these integrals, which allow the geodesic to be computed with arbitrary accuracy.
A second of arc, one sixtieth of this amount, is roughly 30 metres (98 feet). The exact distance varies along meridian arcs or any other great circle arcs because the figure of the Earth is slightly oblate (bulges a third of a percent at the equator).
Positions on the great circle of radius are parametrized by arc length measured from the northward crossing of the equator. The great ellipse has a semi-axes a {\displaystyle a} and a 1 − e 2 cos 2 γ 0 {\displaystyle a{\sqrt {1-e^{2}\cos ^{2}\gamma _{0}}}} , where γ 0 {\displaystyle \gamma _{0}} is the great-circle azimuth at the ...
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.