Geodetic Applications of Satellite Data

The global positioning system (GPS) provides an accurate data for locations on the Earth's surface. In this paper, data for longitudes and latitudes of more than seven thousand places in Saudi Arabia is considered. A database for qibla direction and geodesic distance to Makkah for these places is established. Spherical trigonometry is applied to perform geodetic computations. The database is illustrated and a sample of it for some main cities is presented.