  A new method SREAG (spherical rectangular equal-area grid) is proposed to
divide a spherical surface into equal-area cells. The method is based on
dividing a sphere into latitudinal rings of near-constant width with further
splitting each ring into equal-area cells. It is simple in construction and
use, and provides more uniform width of the latitudinal rings than other
methods of equal-area pixelization of a spherical surface. The new method
provides a rectangular grid cells with the latitude- and longitude-oriented
boundaries, near-square cells in the equatorial rings, and the closest to
uniform width of the latitudinal rings as compared with other equal-area
isolatitudinal grids. The binned data is easy to visualize and interpret in
terms of the longitude-latitude rectangular coordinate system, natural for
astronomy and geodesy. Grids with arbitrary number of rings and, consequently,
wide and theoretically unlimited range of cell size can be built by the
proposed method. Comparison with other methods used in astronomical research
showed the advantages of the new approach in sense of uniformity of the ring
width, a wider range of grid resolution, and simplicity of use.
