Lat Long To X Y

I have 2 locations with LAT and LONG coordinates, I would like to find X and Y distance between them in meters for the purpose of further plotting of a trajectory. Is there any specific tool in the Mapping toolbox for that or perhaps any other ways of doing that? Would grn2eqa work?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Those particular locations are quite close together in latitude, so you might be excused if you did not take into account the curvature of the Earth. However, if you were to take south-west England to Edinburgh, for example, then the distance in latitude would be enough to matter. The difference for the particular latitudes you show is about 0.11 miles per degree of longitude; between London and Endinburgh would be about 4.3 miles per degree of longitude.

Because of this, because you are working in areas where the curve is likely to make a difference, you should be using Great Circle distances.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/map/ref/distance.html

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23026-compute-the-great-circle-distance-between-two-points

Answer 2

[Cris LaPierre]

You don't want to convert to X and Y because you will get the linear distance. The actual distance must account for curvature of the earth. I think you want to use the Haversine formula. It is fairly straight forward to code up yourself (see here)