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I can easily imagine a line pointing dead vertically or horizontally on a sphere. Say I want to draw a line which is always pointing to some degree (eg 45°) from an origin. What is this line like? In a more realistic way to put it, I want to constantly head in a direction such as NE. How to plot it on a map? Any formula for that? What kind of mathematical field is it?

Alex
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1 Answers1

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Use a sphere to plot it and than project it on a plain. It depends what Projection or mapping you use what you get as a curve. On the sphere it ist called a loxodrome. If you use Mercator projection it is a straight line. (It belongs to differential geometry)

trula
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