A Comparison of Great Circle, Great Ellipse, and Geodesic Sailing
Journal of Marine Science and Technology, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 287-299 (2013) 287 DOI: 10.6119/JMST-012-0430-5 A COMPARISON OF GREAT CIRCLE, GREAT ELLIPSE, AND GEODESIC SAILING Wei-Kuo Tseng, Jiunn-Liang Guo, and Chung-Ping Liu Key words: great circle, great ellipse, geodesic, sailing. and course. Vincenty’s formulae [14] are two related iterative methods of nested equations used in geodesy to calculate the distance between two points on the surface of a spheroid, ABSTRACT developed by Thaddeus Vincenty in 1975. They are based on An analytical and numerical comparison of great circle the assumption that the figure of the Earth is an oblate (GC) sailing, great elliptic (GE) sailing, and geodesic (Geod) spheroid, and hence are more accurate than methods such as sailing is presented. The comparison between GC and GE great circle. The direct method computes the location of a sailing addresses some problems whether the navigator and point which is a given distance and course from another point. navigational software developers promptly have to use GE The inverse method computes the distance and course between sailing or use hybrid sailing mixed with features of the GC two given points. They have been widely used in geodesy sailing and GE sailing. This fact found here presents that because they are very accurate to within 0.5 mm on the the formulae tackling relationship of latitude and longitude of spheroidal Earth. GC sailing also can be suited to the GE sailing except some The discrepancies between the results on the GC sailing calculation of GE sailing involving distance and course.
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