colatitude
Sign in to saveIn a spherical coordinate system, a colatitude is the complementary angle of a given latitude, i.e. the difference between a right angle and the latitude. In geography, Southern latitudes are defined to be negative, and as a result the colatitude is a non-negative quantity, ranging from zero at the North pole to 180° at the South pole.
Wikidata facts
Show 2 more facts
- opposite of
- latitude
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Examples
- Astronomical use
- References
In a spherical coordinate system, a colatitude is the complementary angle of a given latitude, i.e. the difference between a right angle and the latitude. In geography, Southern latitudes are defined to be negative, and as a result the colatitude is a non-negative quantity, ranging from zero at the North pole to 180° at the South pole.
The colatitude corresponds to the conventional 3D polar angle in spherical coordinates, as opposed to the latitude as used in cartography.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “colatitude” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.