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The history of longitude describes the centuries-long effort by astronomers, cartographers and navigators to discover a means of determining the longitude of any given place on Earth. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation. In particular, for safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude ...
A diagram of a typical nautical sextant, a tool used in celestial navigation to measure the angle between two objects viewed by means of its optical sight. Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the practice of position fixing using stars and other celestial bodies that enables a navigator to accurately determine their actual current physical position in space or on the ...
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is a 1995 best-selling book by Dava Sobel about John Harrison, an 18th-century clockmaker who created the first clock ( chronometer) sufficiently accurate to be used to determine longitude at sea—an important development in navigation.
v. t. e. A geographic coordinate system ( GCS) is a spherical or geodetic coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on Earth as latitude and longitude. [ 1] It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various spatial reference systems that are in use, and forms the basis for most others.
In astronomy, the ecliptic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system commonly used for representing the apparent positions, orbits, and pole orientations [1] of Solar System objects. Because most planets (except Mercury) and many small Solar System bodies have orbits with only slight inclinations to the ecliptic, using it as the ...
The World Geographic Reference System ( GEOREF) is a geocode, a grid-based method of specifying locations on the surface of the Earth. GEOREF is essentially based on the geographic system of latitude and longitude, but using a simpler and more flexible notation. GEOREF was used primarily in aeronautical charts for air navigation, [1 ...
Geodetic coordinates. Geodetic coordinates are a type of curvilinear orthogonal coordinate system used in geodesy based on a reference ellipsoid . They include geodetic latitude (north/south) ϕ, longitude (east/west) λ, and ellipsoidal height h (also known as geodetic height [1] ). The triad is also known as Earth ellipsoidal coordinates [2 ...
Geopositioning is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object. [ 1] Geopositioning yields a set of geographic coordinates (such as latitude and longitude) in a given map datum; positions may also be expressed as a bearing and range from a known landmark. In turn, positions can determine a meaningful location ...