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Even with these restrictions, if the polar angle (inclination) is 0° or 180°—elevation is −90° or +90°—then the azimuth angle is arbitrary; and if r is zero, both azimuth and polar angles are arbitrary. To define the coordinates as unique, the user can assert the convention that (in these cases) the arbitrary coordinates are set to zero.
The sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is not equal to 180°. A sphere is a curved surface, but locally the laws of the flat (planar) Euclidean geometry are good approximations. In a small triangle on the face of the earth, the sum of the angles is only slightly more than 180 degrees. A sphere with a spherical triangle on it.
Since the area of a triangle cannot be negative the spherical excess is always positive. It is not necessarily small, because the sum of the angles may attain 5 π (3 π for proper angles). For example, an octant of a sphere is a spherical triangle with three right angles, so that the excess is π /2.
A sphere (from Greek σφαῖρα, sphaîra) [1] is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle.Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. [2]
Given a unit sphere, a "spherical triangle" on the surface of the sphere is defined by the great circles connecting three points u, v, and w on the sphere (shown at right). If the lengths of these three sides are a (from u to v ), b (from u to w ), and c (from v to w ), and the angle of the corner opposite c is C , then the (first) spherical ...
In a spherical coordinate system, a colatitude is the complementary angle of a given latitude, i.e. the difference between a right angle and the latitude. [1] In geography, Southern latitudes are defined to be negative, and as a result the colatitude is a non-negative quantity, ranging from zero at the North pole to 180° at the South pole.
There are several ways to define spherical measure. One way is to use the usual "round" or "arclength" metric ρ n on S n; that is, for points x and y in S n, ρ n (x, y) is defined to be the (Euclidean) angle that they subtend at the centre of the sphere (the origin of R n+1).
The solid angle subtended at the corner of a cube (an octant) or spanned by a spherical octant is π /2 sr, one-eight of the solid angle of a sphere. [ 1 ] Solid angles can also be measured in square degrees (1 sr = ( 180/ π ) 2 square degrees), in square arc-minutes and square arc-seconds , or in fractions of the sphere (1 sr = 1 / 4 π ...