by photographic or optoelectronic apparatuses, can be considered 
to be a sort of representation. As any other representation also 
this representation shows the distortions of lengths, or areas, 
or angles, comparing to the reality. It is necessary to know these 
distortions, if information from the pictures should be trans- 
formed to cartographic databases. The distortions of the satellite 
pictures had been investigated from different points of view, e.g. 
(Gonin, 1987), (Konecny, 1976), (Paderes, 1984). The present au- 
thor investigated the distortions of the satellite pictures with 
the aim to define the distortions in the way in which the carto- 
graphic distortions are defined (Marsik, 1983, 1988). The sate- 
llite pictures show all the three distortions: length, area, and 
angle distortion. - 
2.1 Differential increments of lengths and areas 
Fig. 1 is helpful to understand the symbols in following formulas / 
The Fig. shows the basic geometric relations of one line taken by 
scanner in the vertical lateral plane. There R is radius of the 
reference sphere of the Earth, Z is the height of flight of the 
satellite S, f is the focal length of the scanner. In the radial 
direction, it is in the direction from the nadir N to the image 
point B, there is the differentially small increment és correspon- 
ding to the differentially small increment of the angle dw 
58 = «ibis dot. (1) 
cos ol 
For the differentially small increment of the arc s it is 
ds = STE Jou (1 * tgl'tg« - tg dF tgs NO. Ve, edicere (2) 
In the direction, which is perpendicular to the line NB, the in- 
crements of lines and arcs are corresponding to the differentially 
small angle ap. We can consider that ó(* - dà. Then 
és, - --5--de (3 Soc = mail da (4) 
cos COSOL 
From the formulae (1) up to (4) it follows, that the increments 
504 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B3. Vienna 1996