Law of cosines . The power of the point with respect to the circle is equal to both and . Therefore, which is the law of cosines. Using algebraic measures for line segments (allowing negative numbers as lengths of segments) the case of obtuse angle () and acute angle () can be treated simultaneously. By using the law of sines and knowing that the angles of a triangle must sum to 180 degrees, we have the following system of equations (the three unknowns are the angles): Then, by using the third equation of the system, we obtain a system of two equations in
Skinny triangle the stations could be on opposite sides of the Earth. However, this distance is still short compared to the distance to the object being measured (the height of the triangle) and the skinny triangle solution can be applied and still achieve great accuracy. The alternative method of measuring the base angles is theoretically possible but not so accurate. The base angles are very nearly right angles and would need to be measured with much greater precision than the parallax angle in order to get the same accuracy. The same method of measuring parallax angles and applying the skinny triangle can