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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 ...
Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol α) is the angular distance of a particular point measured eastward along the celestial equator from the Sun at the March equinox to the ( hour circle of the) point in question above the Earth. [1] When paired with declination, these astronomical coordinates specify the location of a point on the ...
One can intuitively use rectangular coordinates in the plane for one's current location, in which case the x-axis will point to the local north. More formally, such coordinates can be obtained from 3D coordinates using the artifice of a map projection. It is impossible to map the curved surface of Earth onto a flat map surface without deformation.
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 ...