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The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometry, geographical survey, sport, or atmospheric pressure). Although the term altitude is commonly used to mean the height above sea level of a location, in geography the term elevation is often preferred for this usage.
The process of drawing the altitude from a vertex to the foot is known as dropping the altitude at that vertex. It is a special case of orthogonal projection. Altitudes can be used in the computation of the area of a triangle: one-half of the product of an altitude's length and its base's length (symbol b) equals the triangle's area: A = h b /2 ...
Usually, the altitude of an aircraft is measured from sea level, while its height is measured from ground level. Elevation is also measured from sea level, but is most often regarded as a property of the ground. Thus, elevation plus height can equal altitude, but the term altitude has several meanings in aviation.
An altitude of a triangle is a straight line through a vertex and perpendicular to the opposite side. This opposite side is called the base of the altitude, and the point where the altitude intersects the base (or its extension) is called the foot of the altitude. [23] The length of the altitude is the distance between the base and the vertex.
The term elevation is mainly used when referring to points on the Earth's surface, while altitude or geopotential height is used for points above the surface, such as an aircraft in flight or a spacecraft in orbit, and depth is used for points below the surface. Elevation histogram of the Earth's surface
Azimuth is measured eastward from the north point (sometimes from the south point) of the horizon; altitude is the angle above the horizon. The horizontal coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system that uses the observer's local horizon as the fundamental plane to define two angles of a spherical coordinate system: altitude and azimuth.
In Euclidean geometry, the right triangle altitude theorem or geometric mean theorem is a relation between the altitude on the hypotenuse in a right triangle and the two line segments it creates on the hypotenuse. It states that the geometric mean of those two segments equals the altitude.
In aviation, atmospheric sciences and broadcasting, a height above ground level (AGL [1] or HAGL) is a height measured with respect to the underlying ground surface.This is as opposed to height above mean sea level (AMSL or HAMSL), height above ellipsoid (HAE, as reported by a GPS receiver), or height above average terrain (AAT or HAAT, in broadcast engineering).