great circle

A great circle is a geodetic measurementA geodetic measurement is any method of measuring geographic distance or area that uses a curved (nonplanar) surface to model the Earth.Learn more that models the earth's surface as a sphere. A plane is formed by the start and end measure points and the center of the sphere. The intersection of this plane and the spheroid surface represents the shortest distance between the points. This is similar to the geodesicGeodesic is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a spheroid (also known as an ellipsoid). Any two points along a meridian form a geodesic line.Learn more method, which models the surface as a spheroid or an ellipsoid.