Cassini projection

Cassini projection is a way of showing Earth's surface on a flat sheet of paper or computer screen. To do this, we need to "unwrap" the Earth's round shape into a flattened map. Cassini projection uses a mathematical formula to project the Earth's surface onto a flat plane by drawing straight lines from the center of the Earth to the points on the map.

Imagine you have a big orange ball and you want to make it into a flat piece of paper. You can't just squish it down because it will get all wrinkled and distorted. So, you imagine you are looking at the ball from a really far distance away and you can see the entire surface at once. You pick one spot on the ball to be the center, and then you draw a line from that center point to every point on the surface. Then, you trace those lines onto a flat piece of paper as a map.

The Cassini projection uses this same idea but with the Earth. The center point is usually the North or South Pole, and the lines are drawn from the center point to every point on the Earth's surface. This produces a flattened map that shows the continents and oceans, but it still distorts the shapes of some land masses, especially as you go further away from the center point.

Overall, Cassini projection is a useful tool for creating maps that give us information about our planet, but it's important to remember that no flat map can perfectly represent the Earth's actual shape and size.