Latitude latitude, to avoid ambiguity with the geodetic latitude and the auxiliary latitudes defined in subsequent sections of this article. Besides the equator, four other parallels are of significance: The plane of the Earth's orbit about the Sun is called the ecliptic, and the plane perpendicular to the rotation axis of the Earth is the equatorial plane. The angle between the ecliptic and the equatorial plane is called variously the axial tilt, the obliquity, or the inclination of the ecliptic, and it is conventionally denoted by . The latitude of the tropical circles is equal to and the latitude of the
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