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Great-circle navigation. Great-circle navigation or orthodromic navigation (related to orthodromic course; from Ancient Greek ορθός (orthós) 'right angle' and δρόμος (drómos) 'path') is the practice of navigating a vessel (a ship or aircraft) along a great circle. Such routes yield the shortest distance between two points on the globe.
A great circle is the largest circle that can be drawn on any given sphere. Any diameter of any great circle coincides with a diameter of the sphere, and therefore every great circle is concentric with the sphere and shares the same radius. Any other circle of the sphere is called a small circle, and is the intersection of the sphere with a ...
The Mercator projection (/ mərˈkeɪtər /) is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines.
A family of map projections that includes as special cases Mollweide projection, Collignon projection, and the various cylindrical equal-area projections. Depending on configuration, the projection also may map the sphere to a single diamond or a pair of squares. Hybrid of Collignon + Lambert cylindrical equal-area.
A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great circle. This great circle divides a spheroid, like Earth, into two hemispheres: the Eastern ...
The equator is the circle that is equidistant from the North Pole and South Pole. It divides the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Of the parallels or circles of latitude, it is the longest, and the only 'great circle' (a circle on the surface of the Earth, centered on Earth's center). All the other parallels are ...
The great circle route over the North Pole is 13,000 km (7,000 nmi), or 5 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours less flying time at a typical cruising speed. Some old maps in the Mercator projection have grids composed of lines of latitude and longitude but also show rhumb lines which are oriented directly towards north, at a right angle from the north, or at some ...
Clipper route. The clipper route, followed by ships sailing between Europe and Australia or New Zealand. In the Age of Sail, the Brouwer Route reduced the time of a voyage from The Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies from almost 12 months to about six months. The clipper route was derived from the Brouwer Route and was sailed by clipper ships ...