Latitude (f)
LATITUDINE (I)
Latitud (S)
breitengrad (G)
LATITUDE (P)
the equator
As Julie Andrews sang in the film The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start” (thank you, Oscar Hammerstein II, for those lyrics). For our premier post, let us talk about LATITUDE, part of the title of this website. Latitude is the angular distance north or south of the earth’s equator, measured on a globe or map in lines that run east and west parallel to the equator (more on the equator below).
Your host finds it helpful to picture a round object such as an orange and think of stripes going all the way around, as shown in the picture. Each stripe is a degree of latitude. Latitude is measured in degrees, starting at zero at the equator and ending at 90 degrees (either north or south) at the North or South Pole. There are 69 miles between each latitude degree. Each latitude degree can be further divided into 60 minutes and each minute can be further divided into 60 seconds, which allows for great location accuracy. Since a point’s latitude indicates how far north or south a particular location is from the equator, a latitude position was traditionally written as XX degrees, XX minutes and XX seconds North or South. It can also be written in decimal degrees. If so, locations in the Southern Hemisphere are written as a negative. Click here for the post on longitude.
What and where is the equator? Well, it’s the imaginary line or great circle around the earth’s surface, equidistant or equally distant from the North and South Poles, that divides the earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It’s technically where the earth bulges a bit and is at its widest. At the equator, the earth is 40,075 kilometers (or 24, 901 miles) wide or around. Incidentally, there are four other major “imaginary” circles of latitude. Moving from north to south, they are the Arctic Circle (approximately 66° north of the equator); the Tropic of Cancer (approximately 23° north of the equator where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the summer solstice, about June 21); the Tropic of Capricorn (approximately 23° south of the equator where the sun is directly overhead on the winter solstice, about December 21) and the Antarctic Circle (approximately 66° south of the equator).
The equator runs through 13 countries: Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia and Kiribati. Suprisingly, the equator does not run through Equatorial Guinea, a country in Africa. The Galapagos Islands, part of Ecuador, are located on both sides of the equator and hence are in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Ships often conduct line-crossing ceremonies for passengers or crew crossing the equator (and the other four latitude circles) for the first time. The “first-timers” are summoned, often in the middle of the night, in front of someone dressed as Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, for crimes committed against him. Back in the day, such ceremonies, particularly aboard military ships, could be brutal and may have crossed the line from fun into hazing or worse.
Some cruise ships even offer the opportunity to participate in the ceremony to their passengers. If you see a tattoo on someone of a shellback turtle, it may mean they have crossed the equator. Of course, nowadays, passengers on airplanes, depending upon their route, cross the equator every day.