Oblate ellipsoid of revolution
An oblateSpheroid
object encapsulates the interrelated
intrinsic properties of an oblate ellipsoid of revolution. An oblate spheroid is
symmetric about its polar axis and flattened at the poles, and includes the perfect
sphere as a special case.
You can create an oblateSpheroid
object, s
, by
entering:
s = oblateSpheroid;
When you define a spheroid in terms of semimajor and semiminor axes (rather
than semimajor axis and inverse flattening, or semimajor axis and eccentricity),
a small loss of precision in the last few digits of
Flattening
, Eccentricity
, and
ThirdFlattening
may occur. This is unavoidable, but
does not affect the results of practical computation.