Earth ellipsoid

Shape of planet Earth / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Earth ellipsoid?

Summarize this article for a 10 years old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

An Earth ellipsoid or Earth spheroid is a mathematical figure approximating the Earth's form, used as a reference frame for computations in geodesy, astronomy, and the geosciences. Various different ellipsoids have been used as approximations.

Geodesy
Azimutalprojektion-schief_kl-cropped.png
Fundamentals
Concepts
Technologies
Standards (history)
NGVD 29 Sea Level Datum 1929
OSGB36 Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936
SK-42 Systema Koordinat 1942 goda
ED50 European Datum 1950
SAD69 South American Datum 1969
GRS 80 Geodetic Reference System 1980
ISO 6709 Geographic point coord. 1983
NAD 83 North American Datum 1983
WGS 84 World Geodetic System 1984
NAVD 88 N. American Vertical Datum 1988
ETRS89 European Terrestrial Ref. Sys. 1989
GCJ-02 Chinese obfuscated datum 2002
Geo URI Internet link to a point 2010
Earth_oblateness_to_scale.svg
A scale diagram of the oblateness of the 2003 IERS reference ellipsoid. The outer edge of the dark blue line is an ellipse with the same eccentricity as that of Earth, with north at the top. For comparison, the light blue circle within has a diameter equal to the ellipse's minor axis. The red line represents the Karman line 100 km (62 mi) above sea level, while the yellow area denotes the altitude range of the ISS in low Earth orbit.

It is a spheroid (an ellipsoid of revolution) whose minor axis (shorter diameter), which connects the geographical North Pole and South Pole, is approximately aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation. The ellipsoid is defined by the equatorial axis (a) and the polar axis (b); their radial difference is slightly more than 21 km, or 0.335% of a (which is not quite 6,400 km).

Many methods exist for determination of the axes of an Earth ellipsoid, ranging from meridian arcs up to modern satellite geodesy or the analysis and interconnection of continental geodetic networks. Amongst the different set of data used in national surveys are several of special importance: the Bessel ellipsoid of 1841, the international Hayford ellipsoid of 1924, and (for GPS positioning) the WGS84 ellipsoid.