Latitude and Longitude

The Degree Confluence Project is an attempt to visit every place in the world where a line of Latitude meets a line of Longitude. Pretty cool, lots of neat pictures taken all over the world. Kind of a fun way to get to know what different areas look like.

A little bit of navigation theory:

Latitude is the measure of how far north or south of the equator a place is. No matter where on earth you are, to go a degree further north or south will be a journey of almost exactly 60 nautical miles, about 70 regular miles, or about 112 kilometers.

Longitude is how many degrees east or west of Greenwich, England a place is. At the equator, a degree of longitude will be almost exactly 60 nautical miles, etc. As one approaches the poles, the distance between the lines of longitude decreases, since all lines of longitude merge at the poles.

What’s the upshot of this, you ask? Why should we care?

I know that lots of us on the porch kind of dig tramping around in the woods. As most scouts or Y-Guides know, you should never hit the woods without the Ten Essentials. Handheld GPSes are great, at least until the batteries die, or the seals leak, or they get sat on, etc. Then, you’re stuck with a map and compass. The compass is pretty handy in figuring out general direction. The latitude scale on the map comes in handy for estimating distance, since one minute of latitude suddenly becomes the scale for one mile of distance. Pretty nifty, right?

Anyhoo, Lat/Long is one of those things that IMO everyone ought to know. It ain’t that hard, comes in handy, and can save your life.

Posted by jank at January 23, 2004 2:42 PM