Saturday, May 02, 2015

[lrgprzjt] 4 map projections

The central map is, say, Winkel tripel, which leaves empty space in the corners.  In these corners are small auxiliary maps, probably a different projection, covering the areas with high distortion on the main map: views from the north and south poles, and from over the Pacific Ocean.

This does practically accomplish projecting onto a plane the entire surface of the earth with low distortion, albeit being not connected, and in a one-to-many mapping.  It is curious that 4 maps suffice, not needing 6 as in the vertices of an octahedron or faces of a cube.

Inspired by a classroom map which did exactly this, but omitting the Pacific view.

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