Geodetic Datums
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Geodetic Datums
A geodetic datum or geodetic system (also: geodetic reference datum, geodetic reference system, or geodetic reference frame, or terrestrial reference frame) is a global datum reference or reference frame for unambiguously representing the position of locations on Earth by means of either geodetic coordinates (and related vertical coordinates) or geocentric coordinates. DatumsThe plural is not "data" in this case are crucial to any technology or technique based on spatial location, including geodesy, navigation, surveying, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and cartography. A horizontal datum is used to measure a horizontal position, across the Earth's surface, in latitude and longitude or another related coordinate system. A ''vertical datum'' is used to measure the elevation or depth relative to a standard origin, such as mean sea level (MSL). A three-dimensional datum enables the expression of both horizontal and vertical position components in a unified form. ...
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Chicago City Datum
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of United States cities by population, third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the county seat, seat of Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, the List of the most populous counties in the United States, second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents. Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a Chicago Portage, portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but ...
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Vertical Datum
In geodesy, surveying, hydrography and navigation, vertical datum or altimetric datum is a reference coordinate surface used for vertical positions, such as the elevations of Earth-bound features (terrain, bathymetry, water level, and built structures) and altitudes of satellite orbits and in aviation. In planetary science, vertical datums are also known as zero-elevation surface or zero-level reference. Commonly adopted criteria for a vertical datum include the following approaches: * Tides, based on sea level when specific conditions occur, such as NOAA's National Geodetic Survey-produced tidal datums; * Gravimetric, based on a geoid; or geometric, based on the same Earth ellipsoids that are used in computing a horizontal datum, such as NOAA's planned gravimetric and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)-based Datum of 2022 set to be released that year by the National Geodetic Survey. In the United States, prominent vertical datums for professional uses include the ...
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Ordnance Survey National Grid
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system (OSGB), also known as British National Grid (BNG), is a system of geographic grid references, distinct from latitude and longitude, whereby any location in Great Britain can be described in terms of its distance from the origin (0, 0), which lies to the west of the Isles of Scilly. The Ordnance Survey (OS) devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in its survey data, and in maps based on those surveys, whether published by the Ordnance Survey or by commercial map producers. Grid references are also commonly quoted in other publications and data sources, such as guide books and government planning documents. A number of different systems exist that can provide grid references for locations within the British Isles: this article describes the system created solely for Great Britain and its outlying islands (including the Isle of Man). The Irish grid reference system is a similar system created by the ...
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Datum Shift
In geodesy, conversion among different geographic coordinate systems is made necessary by the different geographic coordinate systems in use across the world and over time. Coordinate conversion is composed of a number of different types of conversion: format change of geographic coordinates, conversion of coordinate systems, or transformation to different geodetic datums. Geographic coordinate conversion has applications in cartography, surveying, navigation and geographic information systems. In geodesy, geographic coordinate ''conversion'' is defined as translation among different coordinate formats or map projections all referenced to the same geodetic datum. A geographic coordinate ''transformation'' is a translation among different geodetic datums. Both geographic coordinate conversion and transformation will be considered in this article. This article assumes readers are already familiar with the content in the articles geographic coordinate system and geodetic datum. Chang ...
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Geodetic Control Network
A geodetic control network is a network, often of triangles, that are measured precisely by techniques of ''control surveying'', such as terrestrial surveying or satellite geodesy. It is also known as a geodetic network, reference network, control point network, or simply control network. A geodetic control network consists of stable, identifiable points with published datum values derived from observations that tie the points together. Classically, a control is divided into horizontal (X-Y) and vertical (Z) controls (components of the control), however with the advent of satellite navigation systems, GPS in particular, this division is becoming obsolete. In the U.S., there is a national control network called the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS). Many organizations contribute information to the geodetic control network. The higher-order (high precision, usually millimeter-to-decimeter on a scale of continents) control points are normally defined in both space and ti ...
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Geoid
The geoid ( ) is the shape that the ocean surface would take under the influence of the gravity of Earth, including gravitational attraction and Earth's rotation, if other influences such as winds and tides were absent. This surface is extended through the continents (such as might be approximated with very narrow hypothetical canals). According to Carl Friedrich Gauss, who first described it, it is the "mathematical figure of the Earth", a smooth but irregular surface whose shape results from the uneven distribution of mass within and on the surface of Earth. It can be known only through extensive gravitational measurements and calculations. Despite being an important concept for almost 200 years in the history of geodesy and geophysics, it has been defined to high precision only since advances in satellite geodesy in the late 20th century. The geoid is often expressed as a geoid undulation or geoidal height above a given reference ellipsoid, which is a slightly flattene ...
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Reference Ellipsoid
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. 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'' () and the ''polar axis'' (); their radial difference is slightly more than 21 km, or 0.335% of (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 Hayfo ...
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Equator
The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumference, halfway between the North Pole, North and South Pole, South poles. The term can also be used for any other celestial body that is roughly spherical. In three-dimensional space, spatial (3D) geometry, as applied in astronomy, the equator of a rotating spheroid (such as a planet) is the parallel (circle of latitude) at which latitude is defined to be 0°. It is an imaginary line on the spheroid, equidistant from its geographical pole, poles, dividing it into northern and southern hemispheres. In other words, it is the intersection of the spheroid with the plane (geometry), plane perpendicular to its axis of rotation and midway between its geographical poles. On and near the equator (on Earth), noontime sunlight appears almost directly o ...
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Royal Observatory, Greenwich
The Royal Observatory, Greenwich (ROG; known as the Old Royal Observatory from 1957 to 1998, when the working Royal Greenwich Observatory, RGO, temporarily moved south from Greenwich to Herstmonceux) is an observatory situated on a hill in Greenwich Park in south east London, overlooking the River Thames to the north. It played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and because the Prime Meridian passed through it, it gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time, the precursor to today's Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The ROG has the IAU observatory code of 000, the first in the list. ROG, the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House and the clipper ship '' Cutty Sark'' are collectively designated Royal Museums Greenwich. The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the foundation stone being laid on 10 August. The old hilltop site of Greenwich Castle was chosen by Sir Christopher Wren, a former Savilian Professor of Astronomy; as Greenwi ...
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Prime Meridian
A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a degree (angle), 360°-system) form a great ellipse. This divides the body (e.g. Earth) into hemispheres of Earth, two hemispheres: the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere (for an east-west notational system). For Earth's prime meridian, various conventions have been used or advocated in different regions throughout history. Earth's current international standard prime meridian is the IERS Reference Meridian. It is derived, but differs slightly, from the Prime meridian (Greenwich), Greenwich Meridian, the previous standard. Longitudes for the Earth and Moon are measured from their prime meridian (at 0°) to 180° east and west. For all other Solar System bodies, longitude is measured from 0° (their prime meridian) to 360� ...
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World Geodetic System
The World Geodetic System (WGS) is a standard used in cartography, geodesy, and satellite navigation including GPS. The current version, WGS 84, defines an Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system and a geodetic datum, and also describes the associated Earth Gravitational Model (EGM) and World Magnetic Model (WMM). The standard is published and maintained by the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. History Efforts to supplement the various national surveying systems began in the 19th century with F.R. Helmert's book (''Mathematical and Physical Theories of Physical Geodesy''). Austria and Germany founded the (Central Bureau of International Geodesy), and a series of global ellipsoids of the Earth were derived (e.g., Helmert 1906, Hayford 1910 and 1924). A unified geodetic system for the whole world became essential in the 1950s for several reasons: * International space science and the beginning of astronautics. * The lack of inter-continental g ...
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Ellipsoid
An ellipsoid is a surface that can be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional Scaling (geometry), scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface;  that is, a Surface (mathematics), surface that may be defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables. Among quadric surfaces, an ellipsoid is characterized by either of the two following properties. Every planar Cross section (geometry), cross section is either an ellipse, or is empty, or is reduced to a single point (this explains the name, meaning "ellipse-like"). It is Bounded set, bounded, which means that it may be enclosed in a sufficiently large sphere. An ellipsoid has three pairwise perpendicular Rotational symmetry, axes of symmetry which intersect at a Central symmetry, center of symmetry, called the center of the ellipsoid. The line segments that are delimited on the axes of symmetry by the ellipsoid are called the ''principal ax ...
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