Flight Distance
Calculator written by Jeffrey Muday and Christopher Marts, Wake Forest University (2000) created for the "Albatross Project" funded by the National Science Foundation and Wake Forest University |
First time users, please scroll down to read instructions and tips.
Disclaimer: this calculator was developed for the classroom to demonstrate great-circle distance and is not intended for use in navigation.
Be sure to get the N, S, E, and W correct (that's North, South, East, and West, of course ). If you have to use "0" for a latitude or longitude, use an "N" for the hemisphere indicator.
To get the straight-line distance between two points on the Earth's surface, enter the latitude and longitude of each point. Tern Island's coordinates are already entered as the starting location, but you can replace those with a different starting location if you like. Be sure to get the N, S, E, and W correct (Capitalization and spacing is not important). Tern Island is in the Northern and Western Hemispheres, so its latitude has an N and its longitude has a W. If one of our albatrosses crosses the Equator, then its latitude will have an S because it will be in the Southern Hemisphere. If a bird crosses the International Date Line at 180 degrees, then its longitude will have an E because it will be in the Eastern Hemisphere. If you have to use "0" for a latitude or longitude, use an "N" for the hemisphere indicator. The Equator is at 0 degrees; just type 0 N. Remember that if your bird crosses the International Date Line, at 180 degrees, it will then be in the Eastern Hemisphere.
This calculator uses the Great Circle Formula.
For more information on how to calculate the "Great Circle Distance" please see the excellent entry in Wikipedia!
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance