Scribd
Upload
35 views

Latitude: Longitude (

Latitude specifies the north-south position of a point on Earth's surface as an angle ranging from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles. Lines of constant latitude run parallel to the Equator. Longitude specifies the east-west position as an angle ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° east and -180° west. Meridians connect points of the same longitude. The Equator is an imaginary line equidistant from the North and South Poles, dividing Earth into northern and southern hemispheres. A prime meridian is the meridian at which longitude is defined as 0°, dividing the sphere into eastern and western hemispheres.

Uploaded by

ailenette.caguisa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
35 views

Latitude: Longitude (

Latitude specifies the north-south position of a point on Earth's surface as an angle ranging from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles. Lines of constant latitude run parallel to the Equator. Longitude specifies the east-west position as an angle ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° east and -180° west. Meridians connect points of the same longitude. The Equator is an imaginary line equidistant from the North and South Poles, dividing Earth into northern and southern hemispheres. A prime meridian is the meridian at which longitude is defined as 0°, dividing the sphere into eastern and western hemispheres.

Uploaded by

ailenette.caguisa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Latitude

In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the northsouth


position of a point on the Earth's surface. Latitude is an angle (defined below) which
ranges from 0 at the Equator to 90 (North or South) at the poles. Lines of constant
latitude, or parallels, run eastwest as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude is
used together with longitude to specify the precise location of features on the
surface of the Earth.

Longitude
Longitude (/lndtjud/ or /lndtud/, Australian and British also /ltjud/),[1][2] is a geographic
coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular
measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter lambda (). Meridians
(lines running from the North Pole to the South Pole) connect points with the same longitude. By
convention, one of these, the Prime Meridian, which passes through the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich, England, was allocated the position of zero degrees longitude. The longitude of other
places is measured as the angle east or west from the Prime Meridian, ranging from 0 at the Prime
Meridian to +180 eastward and 180 westward. Specifically, it is the angle between a plane
containing the Prime Meridian and a plane containing the North Pole, South Pole and the location in
question. (This forms a right-handed coordinate system with the z axis (right hand thumb) pointing
from the Earth's center toward the North Pole and the x axis (right hand index finger) extending from
Earth's center through the equator at the Prime Meridian.)

Equator
The Equator usually refers to an imaginary line on the Earth's surface equidistant from the North
Pole and South Pole, dividing the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere.
The Equator is about 40,075 kilometres (24,901 mi) long; some 78.7% lies across water and 21.3%
over land.
Other planets and astronomical bodies have equators similarly defined. Generally, an equator is the
intersection of the surface of a rotating sphere with the plane that is perpendicular to the
sphere's axis of rotation and midway between its poles.

Prime meridian
A prime meridian is a meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographical coordinate system at which
longitude is defined to be 0. Together, a prime meridian and its antimeridian (the 180th meridian in
a 360-system) form a great circle. This great circle divides the sphere, e.g., the Earth, into
two hemispheres. If one uses directions of East and West from a defined prime meridian, then they
can be called Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere.

You might also like