Calculating a spherical angle

geometry

Given a sphere with a specified radius, and two perpendicular arcs produced by angles, phi and theta.

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To be clear, phi and theta are the angles which give rise to the arcs which meet at a right angle. I placed the labels, phi and theta, on the actual arcs because it gets crowded near the center of the sphere. I am looking for the interior angle which gives rise to the oblique arc on the sphere's surface.

I read these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance

How do I measure distance on a globe?

relationship between a great circle arc and a latitude circle arc at a given latitude

but the derivation of an answer eludes me.

I realize that spending time to answer a question so fundamental and which has probably been answered clearly in some text is a waste of bandwidth. So maybe someone knows of a clear, simple exposition of this problem to which I can be referred?

Best Answer

The unit vectors in the directions of the sides of the unknown angle are (in a convenient basis) $$ v_1=(\cos\phi,0,\sin\phi),\qquad v_2=(\cos\theta,\sin\theta,0) $$ Therefore, the cosine of the angle between them is their dot product $$ \langle v_1,v_2\rangle=\cos\phi\cos\theta $$ That is, the angle is $$ \cos^{-1}(\cos\phi\cos\theta). $$