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The Bessel ellipsoid (or Bessel 1841) is an important reference ellipsoid of geodesy. It is currently used by several countries for their national geodetic surveys, but will be replaced in the next decades by modern ellipsoids of satellite geodesy.
The Bessel ellipsoid was derived in 1841 by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, based on several arc measurements and other data of continental geodetic networks of Europe, Russia and the British Survey of India. It is based on 10 meridian arcs and 38 precise measurements of the astronomic latitude and longitude (see also astro geodesy). The dimensions of the Earth ellipsoid axes were defined by logarithms in keeping with former calculation methods.