Latitude and longitude are a coordinate system used to measure and communicate positions on the Earths surface. Latitude is a measurement of location north or south of the Equator, while longitude is a measurement of location east or west of the Prime Meridian.
Latitude is measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds, and is the arc subtended by an angle at Earth's center and measured in a north-south plane poleward from the Equator. The equator is the starting point for measuring latitude, marked as 0 degrees latitude, and the number of latitude degrees will be larger the further away from the equator the place is located, all the way up to 90 degrees latitude at the poles. Latitude locations are given as degrees North or degrees South.
Longitude is also measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds, and is a numerical way to show or measure how far a location is east or west of a universal vertical line called the Prime Meridian. The Prime Meridian runs vertically, north and south, right over the British Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, from the North Pole to the South Pole, and is numbered 0 degrees longitude. Longitude locations are given as degrees East or degrees West.
Together, latitude and longitude form a coordinate tuple like a Cartesian coordinate system, but the geographic coordinate system is not Cartesian because the measurements are angles and are not on a planar surface.
