latitude : Java Glossary

A way of describing a point on the earth’s surface as a positive angle north of the equator 0..90° or a negative angle south of the equator 0..-90°

For computation, you might use double fractional degrees, or radians. For display, you usually display as integral degrees, minutes and seconds (or second.fractions of seconds) of arc.

One way of displaying the values is Latitude N+48° 26’ 188”, Longitude W-123° 21’ 158”. or Latitude N+48° 26’ 188”, Longitude W-123° 21’ 158”in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

Some people prefer to put the N or W at the end. Since it is the most significant part of the value, I think it belongs at the left end, as does Google.

Some people leave out the N and W and use only + and - signs. Others use only signs without the N and W.

We need an ISO (International Standards Organisation) standard latitude/longitude format!

A GPS (Global Positioning System) unit can calculate the current latitude by triangulating satellite signals. In the days of sailing ships, you could determine latitude by measuring the angle of various stars above the horizon.

There are commercial databases so that you can guess the latitude of a server from its IP (Internet Protocol).