Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The latitude of the circle is approximately the angle between the Equator and the circle, with the angle's vertex at Earth's centre. The Equator is at 0°, and the North Pole and South Pole are at 90° north and 90° south, respectively. The Equator is the longest circle of latitude and is the only circle of latitude which also is a great circle.
The equator, a circle of latitude that divides a spheroid, such as Earth, into the northern and southern hemispheres. On Earth, it is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude . 0°
The length of a degree of longitude (east–west distance) depends only on the radius of a circle of latitude. For a sphere of radius a that radius at latitude φ is a cos φ, and the length of a one-degree (or π / 180 radian) arc along a circle of latitude is
If a navigator begins at P 1 = (φ 1,λ 1) and plans to travel the great circle to a point at point P 2 = (φ 2,λ 2) (see Fig. 1, φ is the latitude, positive northward, and λ is the longitude, positive eastward), the initial and final courses α 1 and α 2 are given by formulas for solving a spherical triangle
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 ...
The disk bounded by a great circle is called a great disk: it is the intersection of a ball and a plane passing through its center. In higher dimensions, the great circles on the n -sphere are the intersection of the n -sphere with 2-planes that pass through the origin in the Euclidean space R n + 1 .
The latitude φ of a point on Earth's surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through (or close to) the center of the Earth. [note 2] Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the Equator and to each ...
Road sign marking the equator near Nanyuki, Kenya. The latitude of the Earth's equator is, by definition, 0° (zero degrees) of arc.The equator is one of the five notable circles of latitude on Earth; the other four are the two polar circles (the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle) and the two tropical circles (the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn).