I came across this fantastic map showing the direction of Mecca, known as ‘al Qiblah’, from different parts of the world.
It shows quite beautifully how counterintuitive it can be over the surface of a sphere. Who would have thought that the direction of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, from New York is northeast? This is due to the fact that the direction is calculated using the shortest route and this is what is known as a great circle route. If you want to get from A to B across the surface of a sphere then the most direct route will always be a part of a circle which if continued would wrap itself all the way round the Earth, in a full circuference of the planet, and return to exactly the same point as you started at – a great circle. (This is the reason that airline route maps…
