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| | | | | Floor Globes | A globe is a two-dimensional scale model of a spheroid celestial body such as a planet, star or moon, in particular Earth, or, alternatively, a spherical representation of the sky with the stars (but without the Sun, Moon, or planets, because their positions vary relative to those of the stars; however, the ecliptic, along which the Sun moves, is indicated).
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Terrestrial globes are the only geographical representation of Earth that have negligible distortion. Spheres such as the Earth are mapped onto a flat surface using a map projection with an inherent degree of distortion. These projections can either enforce angle preservation or area preservation. A typical scale for a globe is roughly 1:40 million.
The Earth is the most popular planet represented, but globes of the Sun, the Moon and other celestial objects have been made, including fictional ones.
A globe is usually mounted at an angle on bearings. In addition to making it easy to use this mounting also represents the angle of the planet in relation to its sun and the spin of the planet. This makes it easy to visualize how days and seasons change.
Sometimes a globe has relief, showing topography; in the case of a globe of the Earth the elevations are exaggerated, otherwise they would be hardly visible. Most modern globes are also imprinted with parallels and meridians so that one could (if only approximately due to scale) tell where a specific point on the surface of the planet is located. |
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