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The Greenwich meridian is a prime meridian, a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England. [1] From 1884 to 1974, the Greenwich meridian was the international standard prime meridian, used worldwide for timekeeping and navigation.
The prime meridian of the Moon lies directly in the middle of the face of the Moon visible from Earth and passes near the crater Bruce. The prime meridian of Mars was established in 1971 [35] and passes through the center of the crater Airy-0, although it is fixed by the longitude of the Viking 1 lander, which is defined to be 47.95137°W. [36]
The basis of longitude, the meridian that passes through the Airy transit circle, first used in 1851, was adopted as the world's Prime Meridian at the International Meridian Conference at Washington, DC, on 22 October 1884 (voting took place on 13 October). [6] Subsequently, nations across the world used it as their standard for mapping and ...
The IDL is roughly based on the meridian of 180° longitude, roughly down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and halfway around the world from the IERS Reference Meridian, the successor to the historic Greenwich prime meridian running through the Royal Greenwich Observatory. In many places, the IDL follows the 180° meridian exactly.
Ultimately the outcome was as follows: there would be only one prime meridian, the prime meridian was to cross and pass at Greenwich (which was the 0°), there would be two longitude direction up to 180° (east being plus and west being minus), there will be a universal day, and the day begins at the mean midnight of the initial meridian. [4]
For a location not on this axis, there is a unique meridian plane in this axial-pencil through that location. The intersection of this plane with Earth's surface defines two geographical meridians (either one east and one west of the prime meridian , or else the prime meridian itself and its anti-meridian), and the intersection of the plane ...
The most important reason for the 5.3 seconds of longitude offset between the IERS Reference Meridian and the Airy transit circle is that the observations with the transit circle were based on the local vertical, while the IERS Reference is a geodetic longitude, that is, the plane of the meridian contains the center of mass of the Earth.
The meridian 100° west of the Prime Meridian of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, North America, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole. The 100th meridian west forms a great circle with the 80th meridian east.