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km2deg

Convert spherical distance from kilometers to degrees

Description

deg = km2deg(km) converts distances from kilometers to degrees, as measured along a great circle on a sphere with a radius of 6371 km, the mean radius of the Earth.

example

deg = km2deg(km,radius) converts distances from kilometers to degrees, as measured along a great circle on a sphere having the specified radius.

deg = km2deg(km,sphere) converts distances from kilometers to degrees, as measured along a great circle on a sphere approximating an object in the Solar System.

Examples

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Two cities are 340 km apart. How many degrees of arc is that?

deg = km2deg(340)
deg =

    3.0577

How many degrees would it be if the cities were on Mars?

deg = km2deg(340,'mars')
deg =

    5.7465

Input Arguments

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Distance in kilometers, specified as a numeric array.

Data Types: single | double

Radius of sphere in units of kilometers, specified as a numeric scalar.

Sphere approximating an object in the Solar System, specified as one of the following values: 'sun', 'moon', 'mercury', 'venus', 'earth', 'mars', 'jupiter', 'saturn', 'uranus', 'neptune', or 'pluto'. The value of sphere is case-insensitive.

Output Arguments

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Distance in degrees, returned as a numeric array.

Data Types: single | double

Version History

Introduced in R2007a