There is no longitude with the number 181
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Finding distance between two latitude longitude points
Hi,
I have a pair of coordinates, in latitude longitude. Looks like:
pt1( lat, lon );
pt2( lat, lon );
The two points are the upper left, and lower right corners of a rectangle. I want to find the width and height of the rectangle, in lat/lon.
I'm a little confused as the right way to do this, because the points are on a sphere - I always want to get the smallest width/height. For example, if the two points are:
(50, -179)
(51, 181)
I'd like to see the width as 3, not 357. Not sure if that's clear, or if I'm thinking about this correctly,
Thanks
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Answers
Notice that if the first of these coordinates is the upper left, and the second is the lower right of the rectangle, then a width that spans over 360 degrees, and a height that spans over 359 degrees is correct.
>> (50, -179)
>> (51, 181)
Maybe you meant to have (51, 179) as the upper left, and (50, -179) as the lower right ? Giving a rectangle with a width spanning two degrees, and a height spanning 1 degree.
To calculate the actual distance, use the great-circle distance, by using the Haversine formula for example. This site explains it quite clearly :
http://www.movable-type.co
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by: thehagmanPosted on 2009-10-28 at 15:04:14ID: 25688813
If the points are (x,y) and (u,v) then the height of your "rectangle" is
| x - u |
and the width is
min{ |y-v|, 360 - |y-v| }