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I need to know the distance in feet between the coordinates N34-00.000 and N34-00.001 (Degrees, minutes and thousanths of minutes) I computed approx 6 feet but am not confidant in my math skills.

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  • Welcome to gis.SE. Your question needs more detail to be answerable. In particular, you need to specify whether you want distance "across the ground" or "straight line" (may not make much difference at this scale, but will make a bigger difference as the numbers increase), and at what altitude. As a hint, 1 minute of latitude is roughly 1852 metres (1 nautical mile), so 0.001 of that is 1.8 metres, and I leave it to you to convert into something non-standard like feet.
    – BradHards
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 20:55
  • Thanks and AWESOME! My math wasn't as aweful as I feared.. 1.8m = 5.9 feet. To amplify on the question I guess I am looking for the distance across the ground at Sea level (0 MSL). I assume it gets bigger as altitude increases (but that is really just a total guess)? Is that correct? and if so then I would also want the distance between the two points at 10,000'MSL.
    – Sarah Good
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:04
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    Might you post the math you used to get your answer? Using a spheroidal model of the earth with R= 6371000m, you should get a distance of 6.08021252430877' (assuming same longtitude).
    – Paul
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:09
  • If you are asking me... I just used an online calculator that said 1 meter = 3.28084, and plugged in the 1.8 meters that BradHards above figured out. For my purposes + or - even a foot is accurate enough. But if your question is to him, it was asked with regard to Latitude, not Longtitude so maybe that is the difference?
    – Sarah Good
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:15
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    It'll just be arc length with greater radius. 10kft is noise on the scale of the earth, so it'll be approximately the same.
    – BradHards
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:17

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I created points in a feature class using the WGS84 datum (geographic coordinate system) on the prime meridian (0° longitude) at these two latitudes, and then measured the geodesic distance between them in ArcMap. The geodesic distance computed by ArcMap is 6.065419 Feet.

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    You should add information about exact coordinates you used and about datum as well.
    – SS_Rebelious
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:10
  • I edited the answer to include the extra info requested.
    – JustInTheWoods
    Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 21:18

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