Difference between revisions of "Coordinates"
From GeoWiki
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[[Image:Coordinates.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A set of coordinates]] | [[Image:Coordinates.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A set of coordinates]] | ||
| − | [[Coordinates]] are a | + | [[Coordinates]] are a set of numbers, [[Latitude]] and [[Longitude]], used to define a location. |
==Format== | ==Format== | ||
There are three commonly used formats for [[coordinates]]: | There are three commonly used formats for [[coordinates]]: | ||
Revision as of 10:33, 26 December 2005
Coordinates are a set of numbers, Latitude and Longitude, used to define a location.
Format
There are three commonly used formats for coordinates:
- DDD° MM.mmm' - Degrees and decimal minutes - used in geocaching
- DDD° MM'SS" - Degrees, minutes and seconds - used in general naviation, particularly nautical navigation
- UTM - Universal Transverse Mercator - UTM would be a better system to use for geocaching, because it's more accurate and, being based on the metric system, it's better suited to terrestial applications. However, even though geocaching.com lists UTM as well as Lat/Lon, very few cachers or waypoint management programs seem to use it.
Datum
Coordinates are based on a datum. Geocache listings use the WGS84 datum, and your GPS needs to be set to this.
