Are pyephem's observer coordinates in Geocentric or Geodetic lattitude?

Question

Sort of a reference to the following:

Is pyEphem 'sublat' and 'sublong' given in Geocentric or Geodetic?

I am using a simulation of a spherical earth to geolocate terrestrial transmitters by the doppler shifts recording by orbiting spacecraft.

Since my model uses a spherical earth, I like that the sublat and sublon are in geocentric coordinates. However, once I have a solution, I need to convert it to geodetic to plot on google maps (I can't seem to find out what e should be in the transformation function, but that is a different question!).

I am sanity checking my sim results with pyephem by computing observer range at the time of minimum relative velocity, but it is not clear if the observer coordinates are in geocentric or geodetic. Thanks!

Answer 1

Observer coordinates are computed using an elliptical model of the Earth, and are expressed in geographically standard geodetic coordinates.