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spherical trigonometry

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spherical trigonometry

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branch of spherical geometry that deals with the relationships between trigonometric functions of the sides and angles of the spherical polygons

~37 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The octant of a sphere is a spherical triangle with three right angles.

Spherical trigonometry is the branch of spherical geometry that deals with the metrical relationships between the sides and angles of spherical triangles, traditionally expressed using trigonometric functions. On the sphere, geodesics are great circles. Spherical trigonometry is of great importance for calculations in astronomy, geodesy, and navigation.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “spherical trigonometry” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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