4 ms·
Aren't there distortions the further north/south you go? At the limit, a 90 degree angle with the corner at the pole would map to a half box shape. I'm having p
by shard 6y ago
Aren't there distortions the further north/south you go? At the limit, a 90 degree angle with the corner at the pole would map to a half box shape. I'm having problem visualizing what happens right before the limit though.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y agoThere are increasing scale distortions as you go farther from the equator, but angles (and thus shapes) are always conserved. Tissot's indicatrix is a way of visualizing both scale and shape distortions on maps. It shows how equal-radius circles drawn on the Earth are distorted by a given map projection. This is what it looks like for the Mercator projection: [1]. This is what it looks like for a map projection that does not preserve angles (shapes): [2]. The latter projection would produce very misleading road maps far away from the equator. Intersections would get squished in the North-South direction, so the angles between roads would be wrong. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/File:Tissot_mercator.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/F... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/File:Tissot_behrmann.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/F...
- roywiggins 6y agoThe angle preservation does break eventually, right at the poles. But it's an abrupt break, it goes from "perfectly preserved" in the region around the poles to "totally broken" at the poles.