uwacan.positional.bearing_to

bearing_to(lat_1, lon_1, lat_2, lon_2)

Calculate the heading from one coordinate to another.

Conventions here are λ as the longitude and φ as the latitude. The implementation is based on spherical trigonometry, with conversions to geocentric coordinates. This can be written as

\[\begin{split}Δx &= \cos(φ_1) \sin(φ_2) - \sin(φ_1)\cos(φ_2)\cos(φ_2 - φ_1) \\ Δy &= \sin(λ_2 - λ_1)\cos(φ_2) \\ θ &= \arctan(Δy/Δx)\end{split}\]

Parameters:

lat_1float

Latitude of the first point in degrees.

lon_1float

Longitude of the first point in degrees.

lat_2float

Latitude of the second point in degrees.

lon_2float

Longitude of the second point in degrees.

Returns:

float

Bearing from the first point to the second point in degrees, wrapped to (-180, 180].