Tue, 11 May 2004

Geolocation and decimal places // at 23:59

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What is the diameter of the earth, and how many decimal places are relevant in all these latitude/longitude pairs that I'm quoting on web pages?

Its been bugging me for a while, finally dug around and had a quick look. 40,075.16km at the equator, 40,008km through the poles. Hmmm, that means that one degree is approximately 111km, one decimal point is 11km, two decimal points is 1.1km and more than that is pretty much irrelevant... at least until I get my hands on a GPS unit.

From the MaNIS Georeferencing guidlines:

Uncertainty based on coordinate precision
using the WGS84 reference ellipsoid
Precision
 0 degrees Latitude
30 degrees Latitude
60 degrees Latitude
    85 degrees 
Latitude
1.0 degrees
156904 m
 146962 m
124605 m
112109 m
0.1 degrees
15691 m
 14697 m
12461 m
11211 m
0.01 degrees
1570 m
 1470 m
 1247 m
1122m
0.001 degrees
157 m
 147 m
 125 m
113 m
0.0001 degrees
16 m
 15 m
 13 m
12 m
 0.00001 degrees 
2 m
 2 m
 2 m
2 m
1.0 minutes
2615 m
 2450 m
 2077 m
1869 m
0.1 minutes
262 m
 245 m
 208 m
187 m
0.01 minutes
27 m
 25 m
 21 m
19 m
0.001 minutes
3 m
 3 m
 3 m
2 m
1.0 seconds
44 m
 41 m
 35 m
32 m
0.1 seconds
5 m
 5 m
 4 m
4 m
0.01 seconds
1 m
 1 m
 1 m
1 m

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