Where on Earth? Latitude and longitude
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What you will learn
By the end, you can read a place’s latitude and longitude and say which hemispheres it is in.
Explorer’s log, day 12: we crossed an invisible line. The captain rang a bell and the whole crew cheered, but I saw nothing in the water. Later I learnt we had crossed the Equator, a line that exists only on maps, yet every ship in the world knows exactly where it is.
Read the explanation
Maps use an invisible grid. Lines of latitude run east to west and measure how far north or south of the Equator you are, from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles. Lines of longitude run from pole to pole and measure how far east or west you are from the Prime Meridian, the 0° line through Greenwich in London. One latitude plus one longitude pins down any spot on Earth.
- The Equator (0° latitude) splits Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
- The Prime Meridian (0° longitude) splits Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
- The Tropic of Cancer (23.5°N) and Tropic of Capricorn (23.5°S) mark the hot tropics; the Arctic Circle (66.5°N) and Antarctic Circle (66.5°S) mark the cold polar zones.