Calculating azimuth

We are standing at latitude , longitude zero; we want to find the , longitude L is given by If A better approximation assumes the Earth is a slightly-squashed sphere (an oblate spheroid); "azimuth" then has at least two very slightly different meanings. "Normal-section azimuth" is the angle measured at our viewpoint by a theodolite whose axis is perpendicular to the surface of the spheroid; "geodetic azimuth" is the angle between north and the geodesic that is, the shortest path on the surface of the spheroid from our viewpoint to Point 2. The difference is usually immeasurably small; if Point 2 is not more than 100 km away the difference will not exceed 0.03 arc second. Various websites will calculate geodetic azimuth e.g. GeoScience Australia site. Formulas for calculating geodetic azimuth are linked in the distance article. Normal-section azimuth is simpler to calculate; Bomford says Cunningham's formula is exact for any distance. If for WGS84) then is the flattening for the chosen spheroid (e.g. 1/298.257223563 To calculate the azimuth of the sun or a star given its declination and hour angle at our location, we modify the formula for a spherical earth. Replace with declination and longitude difference with hour angle, and change the sign (since hour angle is positive westward instead of east). = 0 then azimuth from our viewpoint to Point 2 at latitude the Earth is a sphere, in which case the azimuth

(positive eastward). We can get a fair approximation by assuming