| .... | 1) Given the latitude/longitude of two locations, compute the distance | between them. | | "Distance" in this case would be either the straight-line | flying distance, or the actual over-ground distance that accounts | for the earth's curvature.
# --------------------------------------------------------------- NewsGroup .... alt.comp.freeware Date ......... 2003-12-28 Posted_By .... GRL Reply_By ..... Sascha Wostmann the formula is as follows: D = ACos((Sin(LA1)*Sin(LA2)) + (Cos(LA1)*Cos(LA2)*Cos(LO1-LO2))) * r with: LA1 / LA2 = latitude position 1 / 2 LO1 / LO2 = longitude 1 / 2 r = radius of earth (~ 6371 km = ~3958,75 miles) D = distance between locations (in km or miles depending on r) Source: somewhere below http://geoclassphp.sourceforge.net # ---------------------------------------------------------------- About 18 months ago I put together a couple of small Python programs to compute great circle distances from the above formula .... http://fastq.com/~sckitching/Python/gcircle.py [ 2.6 kb ] http://fastq.com/~sckitching/Python/gcircle_dms.py [ 3.4 kb ] The first prompts the user for Lat/Long in fixed point degrees. The second prompts the user of Lat/Long in degrees minutes seconds. I only checked a few distances known distances at the time, but they seemed to be OK .... -- Stanley C. Kitching Human Being Phoenix, Arizona ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list