What is decimal degrees

If we move northwards at an angle of From the Greenwich Meridian, we can find positions east and west. For example, we can change the angle to This moves us And just by chance, Pittsburgh is located on this line of longitude at about This means that everything north of the equator has positive latitude values.

Whereas, everything south of the equator has negative latitude values. Alternatively, the Greenwich Meridian or prime meridian is a zero line of longitude from which we measure east and west. One way to write spherical coordinates latitudes and longitudes is using degrees-minutes-seconds DMS. Minutes and seconds range from 0 to For example, the geographic coordinate expressed in degrees-minutes-seconds for New York City is:.

But you can also express geographic coordinates in decimal degrees. For example, this is New York City in decimal degrees:. When you put two coordinates together as a pair X, Y , you can locate anything on Earth with a geographic coordinate system. You can express coordinates in primarily two different ways.

For example, you can use decimal degrees or degrees-minutes-seconds. A value in decimal degrees to 5 decimal places is accurate to 1. Because the earth is a spheroid and not flat, the accuracy of the longitude part of the coordinates increases the further from the equator you get. The accuracy of the latitude part does not increase. The decimal degree representation of the location of the United States Capitol is " In most systems, such as Google Maps, the degree symbol is omitted and thus the coordinates are expressed as " Decimal degrees From wiki.

Jump to: navigation , search. Accuracy The radius of the semi major axis of the Earth at the equator is 6,, The number of decimal places required for a particular accuracy at the equator is: Accuracy versus decimal places decimal places degrees distance 0 1. Example The decimal degree representation of the location of the United States Capitol is " Categories : Cartography stubs Geodesy.

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