Longitude

Longitude (/ˈlɒndʒɪtjuːd/, AU and UK also /ˈlɒŋɡɪ-/),[1][2] is a

geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on
the Earth's surface, or the surface of a celestial body. It is an angular
measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek
letter lambda (λ). Meridians (lines running from pole to pole) connect
points with the same longitude. The prime meridian, which passes near
the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England, is defined as 0° longitude
by convention. Positive longitudes are east of the prime meridian, and
negative ones are west.

Because of the earth's rotation, there is a close connection between

longitude and time. Local time (for example from the position of the sun) A graticule on the Earth as a
varies with longitude, a difference of 15° longitude corresponding to a sphere or an ellipsoid. The lines
one-hour difference in local time. Comparing local time to an absolute from pole to pole are lines of
measure of time allows longitude to be determined. Depending on the constant longitude, or meridians.
era, the absolute time might be obtained from a celestial event visible The circles parallel to the Equator
from both locations, such as a lunar eclipse, or from a time signal are circles of constant latitude, or
transmitted by telegraph or wireless. The principle is straightforward, but parallels. The graticule shows the
in practice finding a reliable method of determining longitude took latitude and longitude of points on
centuries and required the effort of some of the greatest scientific minds. the surface. In this example,
meridians are spaced at 6°
A location's north–south position along a meridian is given by its latitude, intervals and parallels at 4°
which is approximately the angle between the local vertical and the intervals.
equatorial plane.

Longitude is generally given using the geometrical or astronomical vertical. This can differ slightly from the
gravitational vertical because of small variations in Earth's gravitational field.

Contents
History
Noting and calculating longitude
Singularity and discontinuity of longitude
Plate movement and longitude
Length of a degree of longitude
Longitude on bodies other than Earth
See also
References
External links

History
The concept of longitude was first developed by ancient Greek astronomers. Hipparchus (2nd century BCE)
used a coordinate system that assumed a spherical earth, and divided it into 360° as we still do today. His
prime meridian passed through Alexandria.[3]:31 He also proposed a method of determining longitude by
comparing the local time of a lunar eclipse at two different places, thus demonstrating an understanding of the
relationship between longitude and time.[3]:11 .[4] Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century CE) developed a mapping
system using curved parallels that reduced distortion. He also collected data for many locations, from Britain to
the Middle East. He used a prime meridian through the Canary Islands, so that all longitude values would be
positive. While Ptolemy's system was sound, the data he used were often poor, leading to a gross over-estimate
(by about 70%) of the length of the Mediterranean.[5][6]:551–553[7]

After the fall of the Roman Empire, interest in geography greatly declined in Europe.[8]:65 Hindu and Muslim
astronomers continued to develop these ideas, adding many new locations and often improving on Ptolemy's
data.[9][10] For example al-Battānī used simultaneous observations of two lunar eclipses to determine the
difference in longitude between Antakya and Raqqa with an error of less than 1°. This is considered to be the
best that can be achieved with the methods then available - observation of the eclipse with the naked eye, and
determination of local time using an astrolabe to measure the altitude of a suitable "clock star".[11][12]

In the later Middle Ages, interest in geography revived in the west, as travel increased, and Arab scholarship
began to be known through contact with Spain and North Africa. In the 12th Century, astronomical tables
were prepared for a number of European cities, based on the work of al-Zarqālī in Toledo. The lunar eclipse of
September 12, 1178 was used to establish the longitude differences between Toledo, Marseilles, and
Hereford.[13]:85

Christopher Columbus made two attempts to use lunar eclipses to discover his longitude, the first in Saona
Island, on 14 September 1494 (second voyage), and the second in Jamaica on 29 February 1504 (fourth
voyage). It is assumed that he used astronomical tables for reference. His determinations of longitude showed
large errors of 13 and 38° W respectively.[14] Randles (1985) documents longitude measurement by the
Portuguese and Spanish between 1514 and 1627 both in the Americas and Asia. Errors ranged from 2-25°.[15]

The telescope was invented in the early 17th-century. Initially an observation device, developments over the
next half century transformed it into an accurate measurement tool.[16][17] The pendulum clock was patented
by Christiaan Huygens in 1657[18] and gave an increase in accuracy of about 30 fold over previous
mechanical clocks.[19] These two inventions would revolutionize observational astronomy and
cartography.[20]

The main methods for dermining longitude are listed below. With one exception (magnetic declination) they all
depend on a common principle, which was to determine an absolute time from an event or measurement and to
compare the corresponding local time at two different locations.

Lunar distances. In its orbit around the earth, the moon moves relative to the stars at a rate of
just over 0.5°/hour. The angle between the moon and a suitable star is measured with a
sextant, and (after consultation with tables and lengthy calculations) gives a value for absolute
time.
Satellites of Jupiter. Galileo proposed that with sufficiently accurate knowledge of the orbits of
the satellites, their positions could provide a measure of absolute time. The method requires a
telescope, as the moons are not visible to the naked eye.
Appulses, occultations, and eclipses. An appulse is the least apparent distance between two
objects (the moon a star or a planet), an occultation occurs when a star or planet passes behind
the moon — essentially a type of eclipse. Lunar eclipses continued to be used. The times of
any of these events can be used as the measure of absolute time.
Chronometers. A clock is set to the local time of a starting point whose longitude is known, and
the longitude of any other place can be determined by comparing its local time with the clock
time.
 Magnetic declination. A compass needle does not in general point exactly north. The variation
from true north varies with location, and it was suggested that this could provide a basis for
determination of longitude.

With the exception of magnetic declination, all proved practicable methods. Developments on land and sea,
however, were very different.

On land, the period from the development of telescopes and pendulum clocks until the mid 18th-Century saw
a steady increase in the number of places whose longitude had been determined with reasonable accuracy,
often with errors of less than a degree, and nearly always within 2-3°. By the 1720s errors were consistently
less than 1°.[21] At sea during the same period, the situation was very different. Two problems proved
intractable. The first was the need of a navigator for immediate results. The second was the marine
environment. Making accurate observations in an ocean swell is much harder than on land, and pendulum
clocks do not work well in these conditions.

In response to the problems of navigation, a number of European maritime powers offered prizes for a method
to determine longitude at sea. The best-known of these is the Longitude Act passed by the British parliament
in 1714.[22]:8 It offered two levels of rewards, for solutions within 1° and 0.5°. Rewards were given for two
solutions: lunar distances, made practicable by the tables of Tobias Mayer[23] developed into an nautical
almanac by the Astronomer Royal Neville Maskelyne; and for the chronometers developed by the Yorkshire
carpenter and clock-maker John Harrison. Harrison built five chronometers over more than three decades.
However, he was not awarded the prize by the Longitude Board and was forced to fight for his reward, finally
receiving payment in 1773, after the intervention of parliament[22]:26 . It was some while before either method
became widely used in navigation. In the early years, chronometers were very expensive, and the calculations
required for lunar distances were still complex and time-consuming. Lunar distances came into general use
after 1790.[24] Chronometers had the advantages that both the observations and the calculations were simpler,
and as they became cheaper in the early 19th-Century they started to replace lunars, which were seldom used
after 1850.[25]

The first working telegraphs were established in Britain by Wheatstone and Cooke in 1839, and in the US by
Morse in 1844. It was quickly realised that the telegraph could be used to transmit a time signal for longitude
determination.[26] The method was soon in practical use for longitude determination, especially in North
America, and over longer and longer distances as the telegraph network expanded, including western Europe
with the completion of transatlantic cables. The US Coast Survey was particularly active in this development,
and not just in the United States. The Survey established chains of mapped locations through Central and
South America, and the West Indies, and as far as Japan and China in the years 1874–90. This contributed
greatly to the accurate mapping of these areas.[27][28]

While mariners benefited from the accurate charts, they could not receive telegraph signals while under way,
and so could not use the method for navigation. This changed when wireless telegraphy became available in
the early 20th-Century.[29] Wireless time signals for the use of ships were transmitted from Halifax, Nova
Scotia, starting in 1907[30] and from the Eiffel Tower in Paris from 1910.[31] These signals allowed navigators
to check and adjust their chronometers on a frequent basis.[32]

Radio navigation systems came into general use after World War II. The systems all depended on
transmissions from fixed navigational beacons. A ship-board receiver calculated the vessel's position from
these transmissions.[33] They allowed accurate navigation when poor visibility prevented astronomical
observations, and became the established method for commercial shipping until replaced by GPS in the early
1990s.

Noting and calculating longitude

Longitude is given as an angular measurement ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° eastward and
−180° westward. The Greek letter λ (lambda),[34][35] is used to denote the location of a place on Earth east or
west of the Prime Meridian.

Each degree of longitude is sub-divided into 60 minutes, each of which is divided into 60 seconds. A
longitude is thus specified in sexagesimal notation as 23° 27′ 30″ E. For higher precision, the seconds are
specified with a decimal fraction. An alternative representation uses degrees and minutes, where parts of a
minute are expressed in decimal notation with a fraction, thus: 23° 27.5′ E. Degrees may also be expressed as
a decimal fraction: 23.45833° E. For calculations, the angular measure may be converted to radians, so
longitude may also be expressed in this manner as a signed fraction of π (pi), or an unsigned fraction of 2π .

For calculations, the West/East suffix is replaced by a negative sign in the western hemisphere. The
international standard convention (ISO 6709)—that East is positive—is consistent with a right-handed
Cartesian coordinate system, with the North Pole up. A specific longitude may then be combined with a
specific latitude (positive in the northern hemisphere) to give a precise position on the Earth's surface.
Confusingly, the convention of negative for East is also sometimes seen, most commonly in the United States;
the Earth System Research Laboratory used it on an older version of one of their pages, in order "to make
coordinate entry less awkward" for applications confined to the Western Hemisphere. They have since shifted
to the standard approach.[36]

There is no other physical principle determining longitude directly but with time. Longitude at a point may be
determined by calculating the time difference between that at its location and Coordinated Universal Time
(UTC). Since there are 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees in a circle, the sun moves across the sky at a rate of
15 degrees per hour (360° ÷ 24 hours = 15° per hour). So if the time zone a person is in is three hours ahead of
UTC then that person is near 45° longitude (3 hours × 15° per hour = 45°). The word near is used because the
point might not be at the center of the time zone; also the time zones are defined politically, so their centers and
boundaries often do not lie on meridians at multiples of 15°. In order to perform this calculation, however, a
person needs to have a chronometer (watch) set to UTC and needs to determine local time by solar or
astronomical observation. The details are more complex than described here: see the articles on Universal Time
and on the equation of time for more details.

Singularity and discontinuity of longitude

Note that the longitude is singular at the Poles and calculations that are sufficiently accurate for other positions
may be inaccurate at or near the Poles. Also the discontinuity at the ±180° meridian must be handled with care
in calculations. An example is a calculation of east displacement by subtracting two longitudes, which gives
the wrong answer if the two positions are on either side of this meridian. To avoid these complexities, consider
replacing latitude and longitude with another horizontal position representation in calculation.

Plate movement and longitude

The Earth's tectonic plates move relative to one another in different directions at speeds on the order of 50 to
100 mm (2.0 to 3.9 in) per year.[37] So points on the Earth's surface on different plates are always in motion
relative to one another. For example, the longitudinal difference between a point on the Equator in Uganda, on
the African Plate, and a point on the Equator in Ecuador, on the South American Plate, is increasing by about
0.0014 arcseconds per year. These tectonic movements likewise affect latitude.

If a global reference frame (such as WGS84, for example) is used, the longitude of a place on the surface will
change from year to year. To minimize this change, when dealing just with points on a single plate, a different
reference frame can be used, whose coordinates are fixed to a particular plate, such as "NAD83" for North
America or "ETRS89" for Europe.
Length of a degree of longitude
The length of a degree of longitude (east–west distance) depends only on the radius of a circle of latitude. For
a sphere of radius a that radius at latitude φ is a cos φ , and the length of a one-degree (or π radian) arc
180
along a circle of latitude is

When the Earth is modelled by an ellipsoid this arc length becomes[38][39]

1 1
φ Δlat Δlong
0° 110.574 km 111.320 km
15° 110.649 km 107.551 km
30° 110.852 km 96.486 km
where e, the eccentricity of the ellipsoid, is related to the major and minor
axes (the equatorial and polar radii respectively) by 45° 111.133 km 78.847 km
60° 111.412 km 55.800 km
75° 111.618 km 28.902 km
90° 111.694 km 0.000 km
An alternative formula is

Length of one degree (black), minute (blue) and

second (red) of latitude and longitude in metric
(upper half) and imperial units (lower half) at a
given latitude (vertical axis) in WGS84. For
example, the green arrows show that Donetsk
(green circle) at 48°N has a Δlong of 74.63 km/°
(1.244 km/min, 20.73 m/sec etc) and a Δlat of
111.2 km/° (1.853 km/min, 30.89 m/sec etc).

; here is the so-called parametric or

reduced latitude.

Cos φ decreases from 1 at the equator to 0 at the poles, which measures how circles of latitude shrink from the
equator to a point at the pole, so the length of a degree of longitude decreases likewise. This contrasts with the
small (1%) increase in the length of a degree of latitude (north–south distance), equator to pole. The table
shows both for the WGS84 ellipsoid with a = 6 378 137.0 m and b = 6 356 752.3142 m. Note that the
distance between two points 1 degree apart on the same circle of latitude, measured along that circle of
latitude, is slightly more than the shortest (geodesic) distance between those points (unless on the equator,
where these are equal); the difference is less than 0.6 m (2 ft).

A geographical mile is defined to be the length of one minute of arc along the equator (one equatorial minute
of longitude), therefore a degree of longitude along the equator is exactly 60 geographical miles or 111.3
kilometers, as there are 60 minutes in a degree. The length of 1 minute of longitude along the equator is 1
geographical mile or 1.855 km or 1.153 miles, while the length of 1 second of it is 0.016 geographical mile or
30.916 m or 101.43 feet.

Longitude on bodies other than Earth

Planetary coordinate systems are defined relative to their mean axis of rotation and various definitions of
longitude depending on the body. The longitude systems of most of those bodies with observable rigid
surfaces have been defined by references to a surface feature such as a crater. The north pole is that pole of
rotation that lies on the north side of the invariable plane of the solar system (near the ecliptic). The location of
the prime meridian as well as the position of the body's north pole on the celestial sphere may vary with time
due to precession of the axis of rotation of the planet (or satellite). If the position angle of the body's prime
meridian increases with time, the body has a direct (or prograde) rotation; otherwise the rotation is said to be
retrograde.

In the absence of other information, the axis of rotation is assumed to be normal to the mean orbital plane;
Mercury and most of the satellites are in this category. For many of the satellites, it is assumed that the rotation
rate is equal to the mean orbital period. In the case of the giant planets, since their surface features are
constantly changing and moving at various rates, the rotation of their magnetic fields is used as a reference
instead. In the case of the Sun, even this criterion fails (because its magnetosphere is very complex and does
not really rotate in a steady fashion), and an agreed-upon value for the rotation of its equator is used instead.

For planetographic longitude, west longitudes (i.e., longitudes measured positively to the west) are used when
the rotation is prograde, and east longitudes (i.e., longitudes measured positively to the east) when the rotation
is retrograde. In simpler terms, imagine a distant, non-orbiting observer viewing a planet as it rotates. Also
suppose that this observer is within the plane of the planet's equator. A point on the Equator that passes directly
in front of this observer later in time has a higher planetographic longitude than a point that did so earlier in
time.

However, planetocentric longitude is always measured positively to the east, regardless of which way the
planet rotates. East is defined as the counter-clockwise direction around the planet, as seen from above its
north pole, and the north pole is whichever pole more closely aligns with the Earth's north pole. Longitudes
traditionally have been written using "E" or "W" instead of "+" or "−" to indicate this polarity. For example,
−91°, 91°W, +269° and 269°E all mean the same thing.

The reference surfaces for some planets (such as Earth and Mars) are ellipsoids of revolution for which the
equatorial radius is larger than the polar radius, such that they are oblate spheroids. Smaller bodies (Io, Mimas,
etc.) tend to be better approximated by triaxial ellipsoids; however, triaxial ellipsoids would render many
computations more complicated, especially those related to map projections. Many projections would lose their
elegant and popular properties. For this reason spherical reference surfaces are frequently used in mapping
programs.

The modern standard for maps of Mars (since about 2002) is to use planetocentric coordinates. Guided by the
works of historical astronomers, Merton E. Davies established the meridian of Mars at Airy-0 crater.[40][41]
For Mercury, the only other planet with a solid surface visible from Earth, a thermocentric coordinate is used:
the prime meridian runs through the point on the equator where the planet is hottest (due to the planet's rotation
and orbit, the sun briefly retrogrades at noon at this point during perihelion, giving it more sun). By
convention, this meridian is defined as exactly twenty degrees of longitude east of Hun Kal.[42][43][44]

Tidally-locked bodies have a natural reference longitude passing through the point nearest to their parent body:
0° the center of the primary-facing hemisphere, 90° the center of the leading hemisphere, 180° the center of the
anti-primary hemisphere, and 270° the center of the trailing hemisphere.[45] However, libration due to non-
circular orbits or axial tilts causes this point to move around any fixed point on the celestial body like an
analemma.

See also
American Practical Navigator History of longitude
Cardinal direction The Island of the Day Before
Ecliptic longitude Latitude
Geodesy Meridian arc
Geodetic system Natural Area Code
Geographic coordinate system Navigation
Geographical distance Orders of magnitude
Geotagging Right ascension on celestial sphere
Great-circle distance World Geodetic System

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External links
Resources for determining your latitude and longitude (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~cvm/latlon_find_
location.html)
IAU/IAG Working Group On Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements of the Planets
and Satellites (http://www.hnsky.org/iau-iag.htm)
"Longitude forged" (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/art
icle5136819.ece): an essay exposing a hoax solution to the problem of calculating longitude,
undetected in Dava Sobel's Longitude, from TLS (http://www.the-tls.co.uk), November 12, 2008.
Board of Longitude Collection, Cambridge Digital Library (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/l
ongitude) – complete digital version of the Board's archive
Longitude And Latitude Of Points of Interest (http://www.thegpscoordinates.com)
Length Of A Degree Of Latitude And Longitude Calculator (http://www.csgnetwork.com/degreel
enllavcalc.html)
Esame critico intorno alla scoperta di Vespucci ... (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/R
A.../0002//0000185.000.html)
A land beyond the stars - Museo Galileo (https://exhibits.museogalileo.it/waldseemuller/ewal.p
hp?c%5B%5D=54117)

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