Map Projections Album

Map Projections Album

Vector Maps created by MICRODEM

	Orthographic (equatorial aspect) Project perpendicular to plane Known to Egyptians and Greeks 2000 years ago Severe distortion at edges Looks like globe
	Stereographic (equatorial aspect) Conformal Projected from point at center on "back" of the globe 2d century BC
	Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (equatorial aspect) 1772

	Orthographic (polar aspect) Project perpendicular to plane Known to Egyptians and Greeks 2000 years ago Severe distortion at edges Looks like globe
	Stereographic (polar aspect) Conformal Projected from point at center on "back" of the globe 2d century BC
	Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (polar aspect) 1772

	Equidistant Cylindrical Simplest and oldest dates 200 BC or 100 AD Also called equirectangular projection, equidirectional projection, geographic projection, plate carrée or carte parallelogrammatique projection In ArcGIS this is the GCS projection Other than as a quick and dirty map of the world, this has no redeeming geometrical characteristics, and should never be used for large scale maps.
	Mercator Ellipsoidal Based on cylinder Conformal Straight rhumb lines, parallels, and meridians Poles at infinity 1569
	Cylindrical Equal Area Parallel spacing decreases toward poles, by Cos(Lat) Shows poles (but distorted) Lambert, 1772 Lambert's latitude of no distortion was the equator. Others have suggested different latitudes (the "central latitude" of the projection): Gall, 45º Behrmann, 30º Edwards, about 37º Peters, about 45-47º Lambert's version is above, the Gall-Peters below. To keep areas equal, note the stretching in one direction compensated by equivalent compression in the other direction.
	UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) This is a projection for Zone 18, and normally would be zoomed in to show a much smaller area. The central meridian is zone 18 runs north south, and the others converge--to the east on the left side of the map, and to the west on the right.

	Lambert Conformal Conic Based on cone Straight meridians, curved parallels Very close to also being equal area for a region like the continental US
	Albers Equal Area Based on cone Straight meridians, curved parallels Very close to also being conformal for a region like the continental US

	Sinusoidal Pseudocylincrical Equal area since mid 16th century
	Molleweide Pseudocylincrical 1805
	Van Der Grinten Entire globe inside a circle All meridians and parallels are arcs of circles (except equator and central meridian, which are straight lines or infinite circles) 1904
	Hammer Modified Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (halve vertical coordinates, and show more meridians to have entire globe visible) Remains equal area 1892

Reference on projections:

Snyder, J.P., 1987, Map projections -- a working manual: U.S. Geological Professional Paper 1395, 383 p.

Last revision 9/9/2019