Open Rylynnn opened 7 years ago
On the surface of a sphere, geodesics lie along great circles (i.e. a circle with its center at the center of the sphere). An ellipsoid geodesic is a minimum-distance path on an ellipsoid, and you might be tempted to think it's a great-ellipse (an ellipse where the center of the ellipse is located at the center of the Earth). If you think it's a great-ellipse, you are right in some cases; in other cases, it is not an ellipse but an ill-defined oval of some sort.