Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface.

It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter lambda. Points with the same longitude lie in lines running from the North Pole to the South Pole. By convention, one of these, the Prime Meridian, which passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England, establishes the position of zero degrees longitude. The longitude of other places is measured as an angle east or west from the Prime Meridian, ranging from 0 at the Prime Meridian to +180 eastward and 180 westward. Specifically, it is the angle between a plane containing the Prime Meridian and a plane containing the North Pole, South Pole and the location in question. This forms a right-handed coordinate system with the z axis (right hand thumb) pointing from the Earth's center toward the North Pole and the x axis (right hand index finger) extending from Earth's center through the equator at the Prime Meridian. A location's north-south position along a meridian is given by its latitude, which is (not quite exactly) the angle between the local vertical and the plane of the Equator. If the Earth were perfectly spherical and homogeneous, then longitude at a point would just be the angle between a vertical north-south plane through that point and the plane of the Greenwich meridian. Everywhere on Earth the vertical north-south plane would contain the Earth's axis. But the Earth is not homogenous, and has mountainswhich have gravity and so can shift the vertical plane away from the Earth's axis. The vertical north-south plane still intersects the plane of the Greenwich meridian at some angle; that angle is astronomical longitude, the longitude you calculate from star observations. The longitude shown on maps and GPS devices is the angle between the Greenwich plane and a not-quite-vertical plane through the point; the not-quite-vertical plane is perpendicular to the surface of the spheroid chosen to approximate the Earth's sea-level surface, rather than perpendicular to the sea-level surface itself.In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the Earth's surface. Lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run eastwest as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude is an angle (defined below) which ranges from 0 at the Equator to 90 (North or South) at the poles.Latitude is used together with longitude to specify the precise location of features on the surface of the Earth. Since the actual physical surface of the Earth is too complex for mathematical analysis, two levels of abstraction are employed in the definition of these coordinates. In the first step the physical surface is modelled by the geoid, a surface which approximates the mean sea level over the oceans and its continuation under the land masses. The second step is to approximate the geoid by a mathematically simpler reference surface. The simplest choice for the reference surface is a sphere, but the geoid is more accurately modelled by an ellipsoid. The definitions of latitude and longitude on such reference surfaces are detailed in the following sections. Lines of constant latitude and longitude together constitute a graticule on the reference surface. The latitude of a point on the actual surface is that of the corresponding point on the reference surface, the correspondence being along the normal to the reference surface which passes through the point on the physical surface. Latitude and longitude together with some specification of height constitute a geographic coordinate system as defined in the specification of the ISO 19111 standard. A prime meridian is a meridian, i.e. a line of longitude, at which longitude is defined to be 0. A prime meridian and its opposite in a 360-system, the 180th meridian (at 180 longitude), form a great circle.This great circle divides the spher. the Earth, into two hemispheres. If one uses directions of East and West from a defined prime meridian, then they can be called Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere. The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth, that runs from the north to the south pole and demarcates one calendar day from the next. It passes through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, roughly following the 180 longitude but it deviates to pass around some territories and island groups.The International Date line is on the opposite side of the Earth to the Prime Meridian. The Prime Meridian helps to define Universal Time and is the meridian from which all other time zones are calculated. Time zones to the east of the Prime Meridian are in advance of UTC (up to UTC+14); time zones to the west are behind UTC (to UTC-12). Mostly, the International Date Line and the moving point of midnight separate the two calendar days that are current somewhere on Earth. However, during a two-hour period between 10:00 and 11:59 (UTC) each day, three different calendar days are in use. This is because of daylight saving in the UTC+12 zone and the use of additional date-shifted time zones in areas east of the 180th meridian. These additional time zones prevent the earth from observing a single date for the instant when midnight crosses the IDL. It also results in the standard time and date in some communities being 24 or 25 hours different from the standard time and date in others. A traveler crossing the International Date Line eastbound subtracts one day, or 24 hours, so that the calendar date to the west of the line is repeated after the following midnight. Crossing the IDL westbound results in 24 hours being added, advancing the calendar date by one day. The International Date Line is necessary to have a fixed, albeit arbitrary, boundary on the globe where the calendar date advances in the westbound direction