Hi,
I am looking for a way to calculate the distance between 2 points on the globe. We've been told to use Haversine, which works fine to calculate the shortest distance between the 2 points.
Now, I'd like to calculate the "long distance" between to points. So suppose you have 2 cities, A in the west and B in the east. I want to know the distance from B to A if I would travel eastwards around the globe and then reach A coming from the west.
I've tried changing a couple of things in the haversine function, but doesn't seem to work.
Anyone know how I can simply do this using small adjustments to the haversine function?
This is what I'm using now:
lat1, lat2, lng1, lng2 are in radians
part1 = sin(lat2) * sin(lat1); part2 = cos(lat2) * cos(lat1) * cos(lng1 - lng2);
distance = 6378.8 * acos(part1 + part2);
The way I see it is that you can draw a circle around the globe between the 2 cities. The long distance the the circumference of that circle minus the short distance. But in contrary of what was replied, the circle's length is not equal to the earth's circumference. This is only the case for 2 points on the equator.
Tnx Jeroen