Inverse Stereographic Projection of Simple Geometric Shapes

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This Demonstration highlights the properties of stereographic projection. This is achieved by mapping simple geometric shapes from the or plane onto the unit sphere using inverse stereographic projection. The inverse stereographic projection of the point to the unit-sphere is the point .

Contributed by: Erik Mahieu (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA



These snapshots illustrate some properties of stereographic projection:

Snapshot 1: preservation of angles (conformality)

Snapshot 2: circles in the plane are mapped to circles on the sphere

Snapshot 3: lines in the plane are mapped to great circles on the sphere

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