Saturday, 1 February 2014

Loxodrome

A path, also known as a rhumb line, which cuts a meridian on a given surface at any constant angle but a right angle.

If the surface is a sphere, the loxodrome is a spherical spiral.

The loxodrome is the path taken when a compass is kept pointing in a constant direction.

It is a straight line on a Mercator projection or a logarithmic spiral on a polar projection (Steinhaus 1999, pp. 218-219).

The loxodrome is not the shortest distance between two points on a sphere.

From http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Loxodrome.html

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