CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-maps
rockstardev
rockstardev

Reputation: 13527

How "wide" or "far" is a google coordinate?

If I have the following coordinates obtained from the Google API:

[longitude] => 18.12288
[latitude]  => -23.1233399

I want to know how accurate this coordinate is. In other words, what area does this specific coordinate cover? Is it a 1 meter by 1 meter area, or is it less accurate and maybe cover a 50 by 50 meter area? How do you calculate the area it covers?

UPDATE

Using this calculator, I could get:

0.000001 = .1 meter
0.00001  = 1 meter
0.0001   = 11 meters
0.001    = 111 meters
0.01     = 1113 meters  / 1.1 km
0.1      = 11132 meters / 11.1 km
1.0      = 111319 meters / 111 km

Is this correct?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 139

Answers (2)

Josh
Josh

Reputation: 3442

The length of a degree in a a projected system (2d system such as the one used by Google Maps) depends on the latitude. Using this simple calculator, you can see that if you change the latitude from 0 degrees to 90 degrees (Equator to North Pole), you get a different length (by up to a kilometer - 110km at North Pole vs 111km at Equator).

Wikipedia has a good summary of the lengths at the equator and those match the ones you typed out. Based on the lat/long that you provided, the accuracy would be around 1 meter.

Upvotes: 0

Jonathan
Jonathan

Reputation: 11

you can work it out here

http://www.csgnetwork.com/gpscoordconv.html

Coords are usually meter accurate if the seconds are well defined.

Apparently i neeed more rep to comment, anyhow,

No, your last comment is wrong.

coords are usually pim point accurate assuming you have seconds included in your coord.

To work out standard coordinates

xx.xxxxxxxxx the first two numbers are your degrees so it will look like this "xx" and "xxxxxxx" for the remainder, to get minutes, you divide the remainder by 60, it looks like this now "xx" "xx" "xxxxx" and what is the decimal of that equation is again divided by 60, to get your seconds. you may be left with decimals after you work out seconds, but those are fine, the more numbers you have, the more accurate your coord will be.

hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

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