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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Mercator projection in the news
From: Andrés Ruiz
Date: 2025 Aug 28, 08:51 +0200
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From: Andrés Ruiz
Date: 2025 Aug 28, 08:51 +0200
Despite all the drawbacks of the Mercator projection, it has been indisputably used throughout history.
The maps shown in newspapers are useless in practical and real-life navigation.
When I'm navigating and using an ECS, the scale makes it irrelevant which projection is used. It's a different story when planning long routes.
As an illustration:
Projections
Implements alternative chart projections such as mercator, orthographic, polar, stereographic, gnomonic, and equirectangular.
Meridional parts are involved with the Rhumb line or loxodrome, and are independent with the projection used. (There is a lot of misinformation on the Web!, and Bowditch is also lax in using it to build his tables).
Where B is the latitude, L the longitude, and C the course.
a, e the ellipsoid parameters.
Fair winds and following seas!
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