NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The magical maths of Google Maps
From: Peter Monta
Date: 2015 Oct 7, 12:44 -0700
From: Peter Monta
Date: 2015 Oct 7, 12:44 -0700
Hi Lu,
If I were to fit a perfect sphere to the curvature of the earth at the equator it would be - as you pointed out earlier - about 11 nm greater in diameter than a perfect sphere that matched the curvature of the earth at the poles.
There are two curvatures at the equator---the longitude curvature and the latitude curvature. There's a drawing on the cover of this book:
So along any given meridian, the curvature at the equator is greater (more strongly curved) than that at the poles.
Cheers,
Peter
