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A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. [2] [3] [4] Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( 1 / 60 of a degree) of latitude at the equator, so that Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees).
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 ...
With this value for R the meridian length of 1 degree of latitude on the sphere is 111.2 km (69.1 statute miles) (60.0 nautical miles). The length of one minute of latitude is 1.853 km (1.151 statute miles) (1.00 nautical miles), while the length of 1 second of latitude is 30.8 m or 101 feet (see nautical mile).
Positions of places shown on the chart can be measured from the longitude and latitude scales on the borders of the chart, relative to a geodetic datum such as WGS 84. A bearing is the angle between the line joining the two points of interest and the line from one of the points to the north, such as a ship's course or a compass reading to a ...
Informally, specifying a geographic location usually means giving the location's latitude and longitude. 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 ...
View from the Swabian Jura to the Alps. Geographical distance or geodetic distance is the distance measured along the surface of the Earth, or the shortest arch length.. The formulae in this article calculate distances between points which are defined by geographical coordinates in terms of latitude and longitude.
where φ (°) = φ / 1° is φ expressed in degrees (and similarly for β (°)). On the ellipsoid the exact distance between parallels at φ 1 and φ 2 is m(φ 1) − m(φ 2). For WGS84 an approximate expression for the distance Δm between the two parallels at ±0.5° from the circle at latitude φ is given by
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.