I know MOA stands for Minute of Angle, but can someone explain this? I make the assumption that it has nothing to do with minutes of lattitude or longitude. So what exactly does it mean. Thanks.
A circle is divided into 360 degrees. Each degree is then divided into 60 minutes, where the term minute of angle comes from. 1 MOA is equal to 1/60th of 1 degree.
For small angles such as this, it's very convenient that the distance between points on the target is simply the angle (in radians) times the distance to the target.
Yep, 1/60 of a degree, which is 1/360 of a circle.
By pure coincidence, 1 MOA is close enough for practical purposes to 1 inch at 100 yards. Of course if the world were perfect, a rifle that shoots into 1" at 100 yards would shoot into 2" at 200, 5" at 500, 10 inches at 1000, and so on. The world is not perfect, so while many rifles will shoot that magic MOA at 100 yards, darned few will shoot into 10" at 1000.
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