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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.
A standard Brunton compass, used commonly by geologists and surveyors to obtain a bearing in the field. In navigation, bearing or azimuth is the horizontal angle between the direction of an object and north or another object. The angle value can be specified in various angular units, such as degrees, mils, or grad. More specifically:
Vincenty's formulae are two related iterative methods used in geodesy to calculate the distance between two points on the surface of a spheroid, developed by Thaddeus Vincenty (1975a). They are based on the assumption that the figure of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and hence are more accurate than methods that assume a spherical Earth, such ...
The ship would sail north or south until the latitude of the destination was reached, and the ship would then sail east or west along the rhumb line (actually a parallel, which is a special case of the rhumb line), maintaining a constant latitude and recording regular estimates of the distance sailed until evidence of land was sighted.
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 ...
A point P has coordinates (x, y) with respect to the original system and coordinates (x′, y′) with respect to the new system. [1] In the new coordinate system, the point P will appear to have been rotated in the opposite direction, that is, clockwise through the angle . A rotation of axes in more than two dimensions is defined similarly.
Calculating the distance between geographical coordinates is based on some level of abstraction; it does not provide an exact distance, which is unattainable if one attempted to account for every irregularity in the surface of the Earth. [1] Common abstractions for the surface between two geographic points are: Flat surface; Spherical surface;
As is shown in Figure 1, the rangekeeper defines the "y axis" as the LOS and the "x axis" as a perpendicular to the LOS with the origin of the two axes centered on the target. An important aspect of the choice of coordinate system is understanding the signs of the various rates. The rate of bearing change is positive in the clockwise direction.