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Angular diameter


The angular diameter or apparent size is an angular measurement describing how large a sphere or circle appears from a given point of view. In the vision sciences it is called the visual angle and in optics it is the angular aperture (of a lens). The angular diameter can alternatively be thought of as the angle through which an eye or camera must rotate to look from one side of an apparent circle to the opposite side. Angular radius equals half the angular diameter.

The angular diameter of a circle whose plane is perpendicular to the displacement vector between the point of view and the centre of said circle can be calculated using the formula

in which is the angular diameter, and and are the actual diameter of and the distance to the object. When , we have , and the result obtained is in radians.


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