I am buffering a point to create a circle in PostGIS like:
ST_Buffer(geo::geometry, .0002, 8)
However, when displaying the polygon in Bing maps it ends up a vertically oriented ellipse or elongated circle.
Since both the Geography datatype and Bing both use the WGS84 datum, this is unexpected.
After little more research and testing I found a solution. I believe that converting from geography to geometry is what is messing it up. Geometry is a flat 2d surface, so when you draw a circle and then re-project back to WGS84, the polygon is getting stretched. rbrundritt does a better job of explaining why in his answer below.
I am using the circle as a highlight for a selected marker, so spatial accuracy was not the goal, aesthetics was.
My solution was to use a different overload of the ST_Buffer function:
geography ST_Buffer(geography g1, float radius_of_buffer_in_meters);
You cannot, unfortunately, specify the number of segments.
The ellipse shape is to be expected. Bing Maps uses a spherical Mercator projection to stretch the map into a nice square. As such the pixel distance between degrees of longitude increase as you approach the poles. A circle will thus look like an ellipse on a Mercator projected map, but the distance (in meters or similar units)from the center to any point on the circle will be equal, even though the pixel distance won't be. By creating circles that have equal pixel distances from the center of the circle, you are creating spatially inaccurate circles.
If you need number of segments, you could do this:
ST_Transform(ST_Buffer(ST_Transform(geo:geometry, _ST_BestSRID(geo)), buffer_in_meters, 8), 4326)
Behind the scenes, that's what geography does since ST_Buffer is a bit of a hack, not a native geography function, so it cheats and uses geometry buffer.
You can use below query to generate a circle.
SELECT ST_asgeojson(ST_Buffer(ST_GeographyFromText('POINT(-97.96989440917969 43.225692889144185)'), 3000));
