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The geoid is often expressed as a geoid undulation or geoidal height above a given reference ellipsoid, which is a slightly flattened sphere whose equatorial bulge is caused by the planet's rotation. Generally the geoidal height rises where the Earth's material is locally more dense and exerts greater gravitational force than the surrounding areas.
The geometrical separation between it and the reference ellipsoid is called the geoidal undulation, or more usually the geoid-ellipsoid separation, N. It varies globally between ±110 m. A reference ellipsoid, customarily chosen to be the same size (volume) as the geoid, is described by its semi-major axis (equatorial radius) a and flattening f.
Modern geodesy tends to retain the ellipsoid of revolution as a reference ellipsoid and treat triaxiality and pear shape as a part of the geoid figure: they are represented by the spherical harmonic coefficients , and , respectively, corresponding to degree and order numbers 2.2 for the triaxiality and 3.0 for the pear shape.
t. e. The World Geodetic System (WGS) is a standard used in cartography, geodesy, and satellite navigation including GPS. The current version, WGS 84, defines an Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system and a geodetic datum, and also describes the associated Earth Gravitational Model (EGM) and World Magnetic Model (WMM).
An Earth ellipsoid or Earth spheroid is a mathematical figure approximating the Earth's form, used as a reference frame for computations in geodesy, astronomy, and the geosciences. Various different ellipsoids have been used as approximations. It is a spheroid (an ellipsoid of revolution) whose minor axis (shorter diameter), which connects the ...
Geodetic coordinates are a type of curvilinear orthogonal coordinate system used in geodesy based on a reference ellipsoid. They include geodetic latitude (north/south) ϕ, longitude (east/west) λ, and ellipsoidal height h (also known as geodetic height[1]). The triad is also known as Earth ellipsoidal coordinates[2] (not to be confused with ...
Geodesy. The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) is a map projection system for assigning coordinates to locations on the surface of the Earth. Like the traditional method of latitude and longitude, it is a horizontal position representation, which means it ignores altitude and treats the earth surface as a perfect ellipsoid.
Unlike a reference ellipsoid, the geoid is irregular and too complicated to serve as the computational surface for solving geometrical problems like point positioning. The geometrical separation between the geoid and a reference ellipsoid is called geoidal undulation, and it varies globally between ±110 m based on the GRS 80 ellipsoid.