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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 ...
The geographical mile is an international unit of length determined by 1 minute of arc ( 1 / 60 degree) along the Earth's equator. For the international ellipsoid 1924 this equalled 1855.4 metres. [1] The American Practical Navigator 2017 defines the geographical mile as 6,087.08 feet (1,855.342 m). [2]
The numerical values for latitude and longitude can occur in a number of different units or formats: [2] sexagesimal degree: degrees, minutes, and seconds : 40° 26′ 46″ N 79° 58′ 56″ W; 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 ...
English: Length of one degree (black), minute (blue) and second (red) of latitude and longitude in metric (upper half) and imperial (lower half) units at a given latitude in WGS84 by CMG Lee. For comparison, dotted lines denote corresponding lengths assuming a spherical Earth of IUGG mean radius (R 1 = 6,371.0088 km).
As one degree is 1 / 360 of a circle, one minute of arc is 1 / 21600 of a circle – such that the polar circumference of the Earth would be exactly 21,600 miles. Gunter used Snellius's circumference to define a nautical mile as 6,080 feet, the length of one minute of arc at 48 degrees latitude. [24]
£10,000 (equivalent to £1.83 million in 2023 [10]) for a method that could determine longitude within 1 degree (equivalent to 60 nautical miles (110 km; 69 mi) at the equator). £15,000 (equivalent to £2.74 million in 2023 [10]) for a method that could determine longitude within 40 minutes.
The equator is divided into 360 degrees of longitude, so each degree at the equator represents 111,319.5 metres (365,221 ft). As one moves away from the equator towards a pole, however, one degree of longitude is multiplied by the cosine of the latitude, decreasing the distance, approaching zero at the pole.
The square root appearing above can be eliminated for such applications as ordering locations by distance in a database query. On the other hand, some methods for computing nearest neighbors, such as the vantage-point tree, require that the distance metric obey the triangle inequality, in which case the square root must be retained.