Details

Let be the radius of the base circle centered at , the radius of the rolling circle and the distance of the generating point to its center; is the angle between the - plane and the plane of the rolling circle.

Let be the angular displacement of the rolling circle along the edge of the base circle. Since the rolling circle rolls without sliding, its angular displacement around its center is .

The point on a copy of the rolling circle centered at in the - plane and at a distance from its center is:

.

First rotate this circle by around the axis:

.

Now translate the circle over a distance along the axis to get:

.

Finally, rotate this circle by an angle around the axis:

.

This gives the parametric equation of the spherical trochoid:

The spherical trochoid is on a sphere with center at and radius .

Reference

[1] H. M. Jeffery, "On Spherical Cycloidal and Trochoidal Curves," The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 19(73), 1882 pp. 45–66. gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PID=PPN600494829_0019%7CLOG_0012.