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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 ...
A special reticle is used to align the mount with Polaris (or a group of stars near the polar region) in the Southern Hemisphere. While primitive polariscopes originally needed the careful adjustment of the mount to match the time of year and day, this process can be simplified using computer apps that calculate the correct position of the reticle.
A metric on a set X is a function (called the distance function or simply distance) d : X × X → R + (where R + is the set of non-negative real numbers). For all x, y, z in X, this function is required to satisfy the following conditions: d(x, y) ≥ 0 (non-negativity) d(x, y) = 0 if and only if x = y (identity of indiscernibles.
d is the distance between the two points along a great circle of the sphere (see spherical distance), r is the radius of the sphere. The haversine formula allows the haversine of θ to be computed directly from the latitude (represented by φ) and longitude (represented by λ) of the two points:
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 ...
Excel's storage of numbers in binary format also affects its accuracy. [3] To illustrate, the lower figure tabulates the simple addition 1 + x − 1 for several values of x. All the values of x begin at the 15 th decimal, so Excel must take them into account. Before calculating the sum 1 + x, Excel first approximates x as a binary number
where n is the local refractive index as a function of distance along the path C. An electromagnetic wave propagating along a path C has the phase shift over C as if it was propagating a path in a vacuum , length of which, is equal to the optical path length of C .
The distance of closest approach is sometimes referred to as the contact distance. For the simplest objects, spheres, the distance of closest approach is simply the sum of their radii. For non-spherical objects, the distance of closest approach is a function of the orientation of the objects, and its calculation can be difficult.