Latitude ( or ). It is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds or decimal degrees, north or south of the equator. The precise measurement of latitude requires an understanding of the gravitational field of the Earth, either to set up theodolites or to determine GPS satellite orbits. The study of the figure of the Earth together with its gravitational field is the science of geodesy. This article relates to coordinate systems for the Earth: it may be extended to cover the Moon, planets and other celestial objects by a simple change of nomenclature. The graticule is formed by the lines of
Latitude package Maxima and expresses the coefficients in terms of both eccentricity and flattening. The series method is not applicable to the isometric latitude and one must use the conformal latitude in an intermediate step. The following plot shows the difference between the geodetic latitude and the auxiliary latitudes other than the isometric latitude (which diverges to infinity at the poles) for the case of the WGS84 ellipsoid. In every case the auxiliary latitude is the less (in magnitude) than the geodetic latitude. The differences shown on the plot are in arc minutes. The horizontal resolution of the plot fails to