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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 ...
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 ...
For example, consider the problem of finding the length of a quarter of the unit circle by numerically integrating the arc length integral. The upper half of the unit circle can be parameterized as y = 1 − x 2 . {\displaystyle y={\sqrt {1-x^{2}}}.}
Vincenty's goal was to express existing algorithms for geodesics on an ellipsoid in a form that minimized the program length (Vincenty 1975a). His unpublished report (1975b) mentions the use of a Wang 720 desk calculator, which had only a few kilobytes of memory. To obtain good accuracy for long lines, the solution uses the classical solution ...
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 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.
Angle AOB is a central angle. A central angle is an angle whose apex (vertex) is the center O of a circle and whose legs (sides) are radii intersecting the circle in two distinct points A and B. Central angles are subtended by an arc between those two points, and the arc length is the central angle of a circle of radius one (measured in radians). [1]
The formula states that if γ is a parametrization of a great circle then (()) (()) =, where ρ(P) is the distance from a point P on the great circle to the z-axis, and ψ(P) is the angle between the great circle and the meridian through the point P.