Process lightning data, trilaterating location, saving results to database

[nightduck]

Examine the database of lightning events, and collect ones with the same (or similar) timestamp. Ideally this would be done in real-time, but not all data is published in real-time. So some lightning strikes would have to be retroactively geolocated. This would be the most common case when a lot of previously offline data is suddenly uploaded. Be sure to take into account which events have already been used to calculate lightning strikes, so that strike's location can be updated, rather than duplicated.

Triangulation is done by using a series of vectors T_j, representing the coordinates of our lighting detectors and their respective measurements d_j. We then solve the system of equations:

Where P is the coordinates of the lightning strike.

See this video for approximating the solution to a series of equations when a precise solution is not available: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra/alternate-bases/orthogonal-projections/v/linear-algebra-least-squares-approximation

[nightduck]

It's trilateration, not triangulation