Sunday, August 10, 2008

Globe-Trotting in Latitude and Longitude

In the past few years, the realization that I've never been to the Southern Hemisphere has slowly worked its way it into my consciousness. Thankfully, it's not something that's going to bother me for long, since I'm going to Sydney in September (yay!). But it's got me wondering just how much of the globe have I covered in latitude and longitude?

Until today, I had assumed that the furthest south that I have been is Taiwan, which sits on the Tropic of Cancer, the 23 parallel. As it turns out, Honolulu is slightly further than even the southern tip of Taiwan (which I've been to) at 21 degrees and Maui is south of Honolulu. The furthest north I've been (not counting, of course, while on an airplane) is Amsterdam at 52 degrees. I admit, not very impressive at all.

My east-west coverage is a little better. I've hit both coasts of North America and Hawaii, which gets me from 158 W to 71 W or so, although I'm missing some points further east in the Carribean and South America. And I've gone from 15 W (Canary Islands) to 19 E (Budapest), but then there's a big swath from Eastern Europe to the Pacific coast of Asia (120 E back in Taiwan) that I've never been to.

So there you have it: the (lack of) breadth of my globe-trotting in precise geographic coordinates. I'm sure you are all more impressive. Go ahead and gloat in the comments.

6 comments:

t said...

Hey Jackie - I've never been to the southern hemisphere either, although we're planning a trip to Quito, Ecuador in January (so, just barely south of the equator...)

Farthest west & north: Skagway, Alaska at 60 N by 136 W

Farthest south: Mexico City, Mexico at 19 N

Farthest east: Warsaw, Poland at 21 E

So many places to go!

Speaking of which, have you been reading Keith Vanderlinde's blog about wintering over at the Pole? Pretty interesting, plus some really nice photography.

Doug Rudd said...

My coordinates are reasonable (in a bounding box sense) but coverage is very sparse. I've only been to Europe twice, and never anywhere in or west of the Pacific.

Within Europe I've only been in in the narrow strip between Zurich and Munich (~200 miles), but I've covered most of the Continental US. I've been to the northern part of Mexico, and then north-eastern Argentina/Paraguay/Brazil down to southern Uruguay and Buenos Aires.

Farthest South: Buenos Aires, AR 34S, hopefully to be replaced by Patagonia in October.

Farthest North & West: Vancouver, CA 49 N, 123 W)

Farthest East: Munich, Germany 12E

Not fair bringing Keith into this, he obviously wins in a latitude sense, and I'm sure he's circumnavigated many times by now.

Doug

Eugene said...

I guess I have to do this the US-centric way to be fair :).

Let me see. N-S is simple :

Furthest N would be Rejkjavik 64N
Furthest S would be Singapore 1.7N

Never crossed the equator, despite being born 5 degrees N of it!

E-W is a bit more complicated. Furthest West before dateline would be Hawaii (158W as Jackie said), furthest East would be Tokyo (139E, hey you were in Tokyo too!). Between the US and Tokyo, I've hit London, Abu Dhabi, and Beijing. Hopefully I'll put some European mean in soon!

Jackie said...

Tim - Where can I find Keith's blog?

So, so far it seems like Doug wins on furthest south and Eugene on furthest north. And Eugene and I tie on the east-west, as people who've been to both Tokyo and Hawaii. Sorry Tim (although Quito sounds real cool)!

t said...

yeah, I'm totally psyched for Quito! Although even that won't win me any awards in this group =)

Keith's blog is at http://australyear.blogspot.com/ -- he's been posting fairly regularly for a few months now and actually just got over a fairly serious illness. The aurora photos are amazing.

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