The Oblique Mercator projection§ was developed by Rosenmund, Laborde, Hotine, and others in the period from 1900 to 1950.  It is a generalization of the familiar Mercator projection, in which the axis of the cylinder of projection may be aligned arbitrarily: here it is centered on latitude 45° North, and rotated to the perpendicular.  While the scale is true along the chosen central line – a great circle – scale becomes infinite 90° from that line. Despite its intriquingly elaborate S-curves and angelic appearance, the Oblique Mercator exhibits no greater distortion than the Mercator itself.  From the opposite point of view, one might say that the areal distortion of the oblique -- obvious for its unfamiliarity – calls attention to the distortion intrinsic in the schoolroom wall map

The Oblique Mercator projection is used for conformal mapping of elongated geographical regions such as the Alaska panhandle that extend at an arbitrary angle across the meridians and parallels.

Projected by Ptolemyä from the Central Intelligence Agency Micro World Database.

§John P. Snyder, Map Projections--A Working Manual; U.S.G.S Professional Paper 1395, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C. 1987, pp. 66-75.

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Christmas Angel Copyright © 1997 W. Murray Sexton. All rights reserved.

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