I am located at about 40°N, 76°W. How can I calculate the direction to Timbuktu, three-dimensionally speaking?
How about this?
Not clear what the OP meant - direction traveling on the surface of the Earth, or a straight line in 3 dimensions drawn through the earth?
At any rate, you can’t take a taxicab there.
The latter. Using beowulff’s link plus some simple geometry, I determined that the direction is 99° from magnetic North (87° from true North) and 33° below horizontal.
Thanks! Now I can put up my signpost!
No, that’s certainly not an option. You’d have to take Air France to Bamako, then Air Mali (on a very shaky and ancient Russian-built aircraft) to Timbuktu. You can reach it overland, but that’s not a drive for the faint of heart or the map impaired.
Chefguy, former resident of Bamako.
Why wouldn’t you point the signpost along the great circle?
Unless whomever is using the sign finds it more efficient to tunnel through the earth?
I want to make sure he doesn’t take a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Don’t you mean “Alba-coi-kee”?
Yes. If it’s one of those novelty signposts like you get at tourist destinations, most of them tend to have horizontal arms.
somehow , this subject seems like it deserves a link to the famous thread:
where is smithereens?
