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Earth's rotation. Earth's rotation or Earth's spin is the rotation of planet Earth around its own axis, as well as changes in the orientation of the rotation axis in space. Earth rotates eastward, in prograde motion. As viewed from the northern polar star Polaris, Earth turns counterclockwise. The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North ...
The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, south, east, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, S, E, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at 90 degree intervals in the clockwise direction. The ordinal directions (also called the intercardinal ...
Foucault's pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris. The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. If a long and heavy pendulum suspended from the high roof above a circular area is monitored over an extended period of time ...
Azimuth. The azimuth is the angle formed between a reference direction (in this example north) and a line from the observer to a point of interest projected on the same plane as the reference direction orthogonal to the zenith. An azimuth (/ ˈæzəməθ / ⓘ; from Arabic: اَلسُّمُوت, romanized: as-sumūt, lit. 'the directions') [1 ...
The east north up (ENU) local tangent plane is similar to NED, except for swapping 'down' for 'up' and x for y. Local tangent plane coordinates (LTP) are part of a spatial reference system based on the tangent plane defined by the local vertical direction and the Earth's axis of rotation. They are also known as local ellipsoidal system, [1][2 ...
Instead of inclination, the geographic coordinate system uses elevation angle (or latitude), in the range (aka domain) −90° ≤ φ ≤ 90° and rotated north from the equator plane. Latitude (i.e., the angle of latitude) may be either geocentric latitude, measured (rotated) from the Earth's center—and designated variously by ψ, q, φ ...
Due to the Coriolis force, low-pressure systems in the Northern hemisphere, like Typhoon Nanmadol (left), rotate counterclockwise, and in the Southern hemisphere, low-pressure systems like Cyclone Darian (right) rotate clockwise. Schematic representation of flow around a low-pressure area in the Northern Hemisphere. The Rossby number is low, so ...
1571 Africa map by Abraham Ortelius, with Cape Verde as its prime meridian. 1682 map of East Asia by Giacomo Cantelli, with Cape Verde as its prime meridian; Japan is thus located around 180° E. In 1541, Mercator produced his famous 41 cm terrestrial globe and drew his prime meridian precisely through Fuerteventura (14°1'W) in the Canaries ...