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The concepts of degrees, minutes, and seconds—as they relate to the measure of both angles and time—derive from Babylonian astronomy and time-keeping. Influenced by the Sumerians, the ancient Babylonians divided the Sun's perceived motion across the sky over the course of one full day into 360 degrees.
degrees and decimal minutes: 40° 26.767′ N 79° 58.933′ W; decimal degrees: +40.446 -79.982; There are 60 minutes in a degree and 60 seconds in a minute. Therefore, to convert from a degrees minutes seconds format to a decimal degrees format, one may use the formula
With the invention of the metric system, based on powers of ten, there was an attempt to replace degrees by decimal "degrees" in France and nearby countries, [note 3] where the number in a right angle is equal to 100 gon with 400 gon in a full circle (1° = 10 ⁄ 9 gon). This was called grade (nouveau) or grad.
Decimal degrees are an alternative to using sexagesimal degrees (degrees, minutes, and seconds - DMS notation). As with latitude and longitude, the values are bounded by ±90° and ±180° respectively. Positive latitudes are north of the equator, negative latitudes are south of the equator.
Degrees, therefore, are subdivided as follows: 360 degrees (°) in a full circle; 60 arc-minutes (′) in one degree; 60 arc-seconds (″) in one arc-minute; To put this in perspective, the full Moon as viewed from Earth is about 1 ⁄ 2 °, or 30 ′ (or 1800″). The Moon's motion across the sky can be measured in angular size: approximately ...
The angle is typically measured in degrees from the mark of number 12 clockwise. The time is usually based on a 12-hour clock. A method to solve such problems is to consider the rate of change of the angle in degrees per minute. The hour hand of a normal 12-hour analogue clock turns 360° in 12 hours (720 minutes) or 0.5° per minute.
One hour of time is divided into 60 minutes, and one minute is divided into 60 seconds. Thus, a measurement of time such as 3:23:17 (3 hours, 23 minutes, and 17 seconds) can be interpreted as a whole sexagesimal number (no sexagesimal point), meaning 3 × 60 2 + 23 × 60 1 + 17 × 60 0 seconds.
In English texts, the latitude angle, defined below, is usually denoted by the Greek lower-case letter phi (ϕ or φ). It is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds or decimal degrees, north or south of the equator. For navigational purposes positions are given in degrees and decimal minutes.