I'm having trouble understanding what precisely the output of meshgrat means and how this relates to the lat and lon parameters of pcolorm(lat,lon,Z). I have a grid of global data, I'll call Z, at a 1.5 degree latitude x 1.5 degree longitude spatial resolution. Thus I have a matrix that's 120 x 240 (180 degrees of latitude / 1.5 = 120, 360 degrees of longitude / 1.5 = 240). Row 1 is 90 N and column 1 is 180 W (-180).
If I follow the MATLAB documentation, I can use meshgrat to produce the lat and lon arguments that I need to supply to pcolorm as follows.
latlim = [-90 90];
lonlim = [-180 180];
[lat,lon] = meshgrat(latlim,lonlim,[120 240]);
However, I don't understand why the spacing of the output is the way it is. For example, the first five values of lat are [-90.0000, -88.4874, -86.9748,-85.4622,-83.9496...]. The lon values follow the same spacing. The spacing is very close to 1.5 degrees, but it isn't. Why is there a discrepancy? The documentation claims that the paired lat and lon values are the location of the graticule vertices. In that case, these values make some sense, since there will always be one more vertex than actual grid cells. To test this, I made the following adjustment to the meshgrat code by adding one extra row and column:
latlim2 = [-90 90];
lonlim2 = [-180 180];
[lat2,lon2] = meshgrat(latlim2,lonlim2,[121 241]);
This did, indeed, produce the expected output, with the spacing now exactly at 1.5 degrees (i.e [-90.0000, -88.5000, -87.0000, -85.5000, -84.0000...]). Again, this is logical if these are viewed as vertices. But under this scenario lat and lon no longer match Z in size, which goes against how the documentation says to treat lat and lon in this case.
There seems to be a mismatch here: either the spacing in the lat lon grids are not accurate, or the girds are not the same size as the data, which would be fine in my mind as long as MATLAB knows how to interpret them accordingly, but the documentation does not seem to suggest using it this way. I have no detailed knowledge of how the MATLAB functions work at a finer level. Can someone explain to me what I'm missing?
Thus I have a matrix that's 120 x 240 (180 degrees of latitude / 1.5 = 120, 360 degrees of longitude / 1.5 = 240).
180/1.5 is indeed 120. But you also have an element at 0deg (presumably). That's 121.
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I am trying to calculate distance between two geographical coordinates and I want to convert geographical coordinates to the km. Therefore I used deg2km function. However, I realise that it is not convert points properly.
For instance, I used these two points.
p_x=[5; 10]; %degree
p_y=[8; 16]; %degree
pos_y=deg2km(p_y,6378);
pos_x=deg2km(p_x,6378);
It returns as:
pos_x= [556.58549846099 1113.17099692198]
pos_y= [890.536797537587 1781.07359507517]
When I calculate distance ( sqrt((556.5-1113.2)^2+(890.5368-1781.1)^2) ) between these points I obtained distance as : 1050.2464
However I checked it google map and also other websites it should be 1042 km.
Do you have any suggestion to calculate distance and also points as kilometers properly?
Thanks in advance!
edited as :
I've points(deg)and I need to convert them km and calculate distance between points.
LAT=[41.000173;41.010134]*pi/180;
LON=[28.995882;28.995584]*pi/180;
I used this code to calculate distance. It calculates properly.
But I can not convert my points to kilometers.
LAT=[41.000173;41.010134]*pi/180;
LON=[28.995882;28.995584]*pi/180;
R=6378; %km
for i=1:length(LAT)-1
psi(i,1) = atan2( sin (LON(i+1)-LON(i)) * cos (LAT(i+1)) , cos (LAT(i)) *sin (LAT(i+1)) - sin (LAT(i)) * cos (LAT(i+1)) * cos (LON(i+1)-LON(i)) );
a=(sin((LAT(i+1)-LAT(i))/2))^2+cos(LAT(i))*cos(LAT(i+1))*(sin((LON(i+1)-LON(i))/2))^2;
c=2*atan2(sqrt(a),sqrt(1-a));
d(i,1)=R*c;
end
I have some questions about converting kilometers to geographical coordinates.
As you can see figure attached, the left one is trajectory interms of kilometers. I entered geographical coordinates and calculate trajectory as kilometers. For my calculations I need to convert degrees to kilometers. I used this code:
LAT=[41.030503; 41.048334; 41.071551 ]*pi/180;
LON=[28.999000; 29.037494; 29.052138 ]*pi/180;
for i=1:length(LAT)-1
psi_coordinate(i,1) = atan2( sin (LON(i+1)-LON(i)) * cos (LAT(i+1)) , cos (LAT(i)) *sin (LAT(i+1)) - sin (LAT(i)) * cos (LAT(i+1)) * cos (LON(i+1)-LON(i)) );
a=(sin((LAT(i+1)-LAT(i))/2))^2+cos(LAT(i))*cos(LAT(i+1))*(sin((LON(i+1)-LON(i))/2))^2;
c=2*atan2(sqrt(a),sqrt(1-a));
d(i,1)=R*c;
pos_x(i+1,1)=pos_x(i,1)+d(i,1)*cos(psi_coordinate(i,1)); %convert to kilometer
pos_y(i+1,1)=pos_y(i,1)+d(i,1)*sin(psi_coordinate(i,1)); %convert to kilometer
distance_h(i,1)=sqrt(((LAT(i+1)-LAT(i))^2)+((LON(i+1)-LON(i))^2))*1000 ; %kilometer
end
distance=sum(d);
pos_x=pos_x*1000; %convert to meter
pos_y=pos_y*1000; %convert to meter
pos_x and pos_y are ploted as circle at the figure (left).
After I calculate ship trajectory, I need to convert them degrees again.
If I use "km2deg" command I obtained my coordinates as given figure (right) and the code that I used is:
ydeg=LON(1)*180/pi+km2deg(y/1000);
xdeg=LAT(1)*180/pi+km2deg(x/1000);
But as you can see the blue line (ship trajectory) is not close to the desired path as figure given left. Normally it should be the same trend for these two plot. Because all I do is here is just converting the units. I guess I have some troubles to used "km2deg" command.
Do you have any suggestions to convert my points correctly from km to deg?
For projection I am using
m_proj('Mercator')
Next I use the following to convert an array of lon and lat points into x y coordinates.
[x,y] = m_ll2xy(lon,lat)
The [x,y] I got were in some units that I didn't understand. For example the x corresponding to longitude of -180 and 180 degrees are -pi and pi, while the y corresponding to latitude of -85 to 85 degrees are -3.1313 and 3.1313.
I want to get the [x,y] in units of km, which I understand have to be defined from a fixed point. How can I do this? Thanks
Imagine a dome with its centre in the +z direction. What I want to do is to move that dome's centre to a different axis (e.g. 20 degrees x axis, 20 degrees y axis, 20 degrees z axis). How can I do that ? Any hint/tip helps.
Add more info:
I've been dabbling with rotation matrices in wiki for a while. The problem is, it is not a commutative operation. RxRyRz is not same as RzRyRx. So based on the way I multiple it I get a different final results. For example, I want my final projection to have 20 degrees from the original X axis, 20 degrees from original Y axis and 20 degrees from original Z axis. Based on the matrix, giving alpha, beta, gamma values 20 (or its corresponding radian) does NOT result the intended rotation. Am I missing something? Is there a matrix that I can just put the intended angles and get it at the end ?
Using a rotation matrix is an easy way to rotate a collection of (x,y,z) points. You can calculate a rotation matrix for your case using the equations in the general rotation section. Note that figuring out the angle values to plug into those equations can be tricky. Think of it as rotating about one axis at a time and remember that the order of your rotations (order of multiplications) does matter.
An alternative to the general rotation equations is to calculate a rotation matrix from axis and angle. It may be easier for you to define correct parameters with this method.
Update: After perusing Wikipedia, I found a simple way to calculate rotation axis and angle between two vectors. Just fill in your starting and ending vectors for a and b here:
a = [0.0 0.0 1.0];
b = [0.5 0.5 0.0];
vectorMag = #(x) sqrt(sum(x.^2));
rotAngle = acos(dot(a,b) / (vectorMag(a) * vectorMag(b)))
rotAxis = cross(a,b)
rotAxis =
-0.5 0.5 0
rotAngle =
1.5708
I wanted to test the mapKit and wanted to make my own overlay to display the accuracy of my position.
If i have a zoom factor of for example .005 which radius does my circle around me has to have(If my accuracy is for example 500m)?
Would be great to get some help :)
Thanks a lot.
Look at the documentation for MKCoordinateSpan, which is part of the map's region property. One degree of latitude is always approx. 111 km, so converting the latitudeDelta to meters and then getting to the meters per pixel should be easy. For longitudinal values it is not quite so easy as the distance covered by one degree of longitude varies between 111 km (at the equator) and 0 km (at the poles).
My way to get meters per pixel:
MKMapView *mapView = ...;
CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate = ...;
MKMapRect mapRect = mapView.visibleMapRect;
CLLocationDistance metersPerMapPoint = MKMetersPerMapPointAtLatitude(coordinate.latitude);
CGFloat metersPerPixel = metersPerMapPoint * mapRect.size.width / mapView.bounds.size.width;
To add to another answer, a difference of one minute of latitude corresponds to one nautical mile: that's how the nautical mile was defined. So, converting to statute miles, 1 nautical mile = 1.1508 statue miles, or 6076.1 ft. or 1852 meters.
When you go to longitude, the size of the longitude circles around the Earth shrink as latitude increases, as was noted on the previous answer. The correct factor is that
1 minute of longitude = (1852 meters)*cos(theta),
where theta is the latitude.
Of course, the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but the simple calculation above would never be off by more than 1%.