Triangle of these conditions hold: (a) each of the angles is positive, and (b) the angles sum to 180°. If degenerate triangles are permitted, angles of 0° are permitted. Three positive angles "α", "β", and "γ", each of them less than 180°, are the angles of a triangle if and only if any one of the following conditions holds: the last equality applying only if none of the angles is 90° (so the tangent function's value is always finite). There are thousands of different constructions that find a special point associated with (and often inside) a triangle, satisfying some unique property:
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