Peirce quincuncial projection
The Peirce quincuncial projection is a conformal map projection (except for four points where its conformality fails) that presents the sphere as a square. It was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in 1879.
History
The maturation of complex analysis led to general techniques for conformal mapping, where points of a flat surface are handled as numbers on the complex plane. While working at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce published his projection in 1879 (Peirce 1879)[1], having been inspired by H.A. Schwarz's 1869 conformal transformation of a circle onto a polygon of n sides (known as the Schwarz-Christoffel mapping). In the normal aspect, Peirce's projection presents the northern hemisphere in a square; the other hemisphere is split into four isosceles triangles symmetrically surrounding the first one, akin to star-like projections. In effect, the whole map is a square, inspiring Peirce to call his projection quincuncial, after the arrangement of five items in a quincunx.
After Peirce presented his projection, two other cartographers developed similar projections of the hemisphere (or the whole sphere, after a suitable rearrangement) on a square: Guyou in 1887 and Adams in 1925 (Lee, 1976). The three projections are transversal versions of each other (see related projections below).
Formal description
The Peirce quincuncial projection is "formed by transforming the stereographic projection with a pole at infinity, by means of an elliptic function" (Peirce, 1879). The Peirce quincuncial is really a projection of the hemisphere, but its tessellation properties (see below) permit its use for the entire sphere. Peirce's projection maps the interior of a circle (corresponding to each hemisphere, which were created by projecting them using the stereographic projection) onto the interior of a square (using the Schwarz-Christoffel mapping) (Lee, 1976).
A point P on the Earth's surface, a distance p from the North Pole with longitude θ and latitude λ is first mapped to a point (p, θ) of the plane through the equator, viewed as the complex plane with coordinate w; this w coordinate is then mapped to another point (x, y) of the complex plane (given the coordinate z) by an elliptic function of the first kind. Using Gudermann's notation for Jacobi's elliptic functions, the relationships are
Properties
According to Peirce, his projection has the following properties (Peirce, 1879):
- The sphere is presented in a square.
- The part where the exaggeration of scale amounts to double that at the centre is only 9% of the are of the sphere, against 13% for the Mercator and 50% for the stereographic
- The curvature of lines representing great circles is, in every case, very slight, over the greater part of their length.
- It is conformal everywhere except at the corners of the inner hemisphere (thus the midpoints of edges of the projection), where the Equator and 4 meridians change direction abruptly (the Equator is represented by a square).
- It can be tessellated in all directions.
Tiled Peirce quincuncial maps
The projection tessellates the plane; i.e., repeated copies can completely cover (tile) an arbitrary area, each copy's features exactly matching those of its neighbors. See this image for an example. Furthermore, the four triangles of the second hemisphere of Peirce quincuncial projection can be rearranged as another square that is placed next to the square that corresponds to the first hemisphere, resulting in a rectangle with aspect ratio of 2:1; this arrangement is equivalent the transverse aspect of the Guyou hemisphere-in-a-square projection (Snyder, 1993).
Known uses
Like many other projections based upon complex numbers, the Peirce quincuncial has been rarely used for geographic purposes. One of the few recorded cases is in 1946, when it was used by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey world map of air routes (Snyder, 1993). It has been used recently to present spherical panoramas for practical as well as aesthetic purposes, where it can present the entire sphere with most areas being recognizable (German et al 2007).
Related projections
- It is based upon the stereographic projection
- Its transverse aspect of one hemisphere becomes the Adams hemisphere-in-a-square projection (the pole is placed at the corner of the square)
- Its oblique aspect (45 degrees) of one hemisphere becomes the Guyou hemisphere-in-a-square projection (the pole is placed in the middle of the edge of the square).
Notes
- ^ (Lee, 1976) gives 1877 as the year in which the projection was conceived, citing "US Coast Survey Report for the Year Ending with June 1877", 191--192.
References
- German, Daniel (June 2007). "New Methods to Project Panoramas for Practical and Aesthetic Purposes". "Proceedings of Computational Aesthetics 2007". Banff: Eurographics. pp. 15--22.
{{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter|booktitle=ignored (|book-title=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Grattan-Guinness, I. (1997). The Fontana History of the Mathematical Sciences. London: Fontana Press (Harper Collins). ISBN 0-00-686179-2.
- L.P. Lee (1976). "Conformal Projections based on Elliptic Functions". Cartographica. 13 (Monograph 16, supplement No. 1 to Canadian Cartographer).
- C.S. Peirce (1879). "A Quincuncial Projection of the Sphere". American Journal of Mathematics. 2 (4): 394--396.
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- Snyder, John P. (1993). Flattening the Earth. University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-76746-9.
- Snyder, John P. (1989). An Album of Map Projections, Professional Paper 1453. US Geological Survey.