What kind of projection is the Transverse Mercator?
What kind of projection is the Transverse Mercator?
conformal map projection
Transverse Mercator is a conformal map projection. It generally does not maintain true directions, but angles and shapes are maintained at infinitesimal scale. Distances are accurate along the central meridian if the scale factor is 1.0.
What type of map projection is a Mercator map?
Mercator projection, type of map projection introduced in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator. It is often described as a cylindrical projection, but it must be derived mathematically.
What distortions are present in a Mercator map projection?
Although the linear scale is equal in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects, the Mercator projection distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases from the equator to the poles, where the scale becomes infinite.
What is UTM map projection?
The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) is a map projection system for assigning coordinates to locations on the surface of the Earth. Like the traditional method of latitude and longitude, it is a horizontal position representation, which means it ignores altitude and treats the earth as a perfect ellipsoid.
What was a Mercator map made to be able to do?
In 1569, Mercator published his epic world map. This map, with its Mercator projection, was designed to help sailors navigate around the globe. They could use latitude and longitude lines to plot a straight route.
How is the Mercator projection projected?
It became the standard map projection for navigation because it is unique in representing north as up and south as down everywhere while preserving local directions and shapes. The map is thereby conformal. As a side effect, the Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator.
What is the Mercator map projection used for?
Description. Mercator is a conformal cylindrical map projection that was originally created to display accurate compass bearings for sea travel. An additional feature of this projection is that all local shapes are accurate and correctly defined at infinitesimal scale. It was presented by Gerardus Mercator in 1569.
How does the Mercator projection distort?
Mercator maps distort the shape and relative size of continents, particularly near the poles. The popular Mercator projection distorts the relative size of landmasses, exaggerating the size of land near the poles as compared to areas near the equator.
What does the Mercator projection do?
Description. Mercator is a conformal cylindrical map projection that was originally created to display accurate compass bearings for sea travel. An additional feature of this projection is that all local shapes are accurate and correctly defined at infinitesimal scale.
How is a Mercator map made?
In 1569, Mercator developed a better, more accurate projection. Although the execution was difficult, the basic idea was simple: Imagine a globe with a paper cylinder wrapped around it — Mercator projected that globe onto the paper and then unwrapped it.
What are the disadvantages of a Mercator projection?
The main advantages of this projection are that there is very little distortion of shape, the map is rectangular, and direction is consistent. The disadvantage to the Mercator Projection is that there is great distortion near the poles. This can be clearly seen on the map of Canada.
Why is the Mercator projection used for navigation?
The Mercator projection is still used commonly for navigation. On the other hand, because of great land area distortions, it is not well suited for general world maps. Therefore, Mercator himself used the equal-area sinusoidal projection to show relative areas.
What does Universal Transverse Mercator grid mean?
UTM is the acronym for Universal Transverse Mercator, a plane coordinate grid system named for the map projection on which it is based (Transverse Mercator). The UTM system consists of 60 zones, each 6-degrees of longitude in width. The zones are numbered 1-60, beginning at 180-degrees longitude and increasing to the east.
What is a transverse projection?
Types of Projections. A cylindrical projection usually places the earth inside a cylinder with the equator tangent or secant to the inside of the cylinder. If the cylinder is placed perpendicular to the axis of the earth, the resulting projection is called a transverse projection. In a conic projection,…
