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The Mercator projection of a world map. The angles are untrue for area, especially at high latitudes. Also note increasing distances between the latitudes towards the poles and the parallel lines of longitude. The only true world map is the globe. The Mercator projection comes from a globe inside a cylinder.
In normal aspect, these map regularly-spaced meridians to equally spaced vertical lines, and parallels to horizontal lines. Pseudocylindrical In normal aspect, these map the central meridian and parallels as straight lines. Other meridians are curves (or possibly straight from pole to equator), regularly spaced along parallels. Conic
Assuming a spherical Earth, a meridian is a great semicircle on Earth's surface. Adopting instead a spheroidal or ellipsoid model of Earth, the meridian is half of a north-south great ellipse. The length of a meridian is twice the length of an Earth quadrant, equal to 20,003.93 km (12,429.87 mi) on a modern ellipsoid . [2]
Equirectangular projection of the world; the standard parallel is the equator (plate carrée projection). Equirectangular projection with Tissot's indicatrix of deformation and with the standard parallels lying on the equator True-colour satellite image of Earth in equirectangular projection Height map of planet Earth at 2km per pixel, including oceanic bathymetry information, normalized as 8 ...
Earth's graticule. The vertical lines from pole to pole are lines of constant longitude, or meridians. The circles parallel to the equator are lines of constant latitude, or parallels. The graticule shows the latitude and longitude of points on the surface. In this example meridians are spaced at 6° intervals and parallels at 4° intervals.
Scale is constant along the central meridian, and east–west scale is constant throughout the map. Therefore, the length of each parallel on the map is proportional to the cosine of the latitude, as it is on the globe. This makes the left and right bounding meridians of the map into half of a sine wave, each mirroring the other.
The 45th parallel north is often called the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole, but the true halfway point is 16.038487 km (9.965854 mi) north of it (at approximately 45°08'39.544") because Earth is an oblate spheroid; that is, it bulges at the equator and is flattened at the poles.
The 58th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 58 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe , Asia , the Pacific Ocean , North America , and the Atlantic Ocean . At this latitude the Sun is visible for 18 hours, 11 minutes during the summer solstice and 6 hours, 27 minutes during the winter solstice .