Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
The distance (or perpendicular distance) from a point to a line is the shortest distance from a fixed point to any point on a fixed infinite line in Euclidean geometry. It is the length of the line segment which joins the point to the line and is perpendicular to the line. The formula for calculating it can be derived and expressed in several ways.
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 ...
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 ...
For example, to find the midpoint of the path, substitute σ = 1 ⁄ 2 (σ 01 + σ 02); alternatively to find the point a distance d from the starting point, take σ = σ 01 + d/R. Likewise, the vertex , the point on the great circle with greatest latitude, is found by substituting σ = + 1 ⁄ 2 π.
When the rays are lines of sight from an observer to two points in space, it is known as the apparent distance or apparent separation. Angular distance appears in mathematics (in particular geometry and trigonometry ) and all natural sciences (e.g., kinematics , astronomy , and geophysics ).
That is (unlike road distance with one-way streets) the distance between two points does not depend on which of the two points is the start and which is the destination. [11] It is positive, meaning that the distance between every two distinct points is a positive number, while the distance from any point to itself is zero. [11]
Geographical distance or geodetic distance is the distance measured along the surface of the Earth, or the shortest arch length. The formulae in this article calculate distances between points which are defined by geographical coordinates in terms of latitude and longitude. This distance is an element in solving the second (inverse) geodetic ...