Coordinate converter
Convert between decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds. Paste in 48°51'30" and it reads it back as 48.8584.
That's about the same as the latitude of Paris. Written in degrees, minutes and seconds that is 48°51'30.24".
What it means
Where does that point?
Ground distances are for latitude, where a degree is about 111.1 km anywhere on Earth. A degree of longitude shrinks towards the poles, to nothing at all.
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Three things worth knowing
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Minutes and seconds are sixtieths
0.8584° × 60 = 51.5 minutes, and 0.5 × 60 = 30 seconds. It is the same arithmetic as hours and minutes, which is not a coincidence.
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Babylonian base sixty
The division of the circle into 360 parts, and each into sixty, comes from Babylonian astronomy. It survived into clocks and coordinates alike because 60 divides so neatly.
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A minute is not a decimal
48°30' is 48.5°, not 48.30°. Typing the minutes after the decimal point puts you 22 kilometers from where you meant to be.
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About degrees, minutes and seconds
Coordinates come in two forms. GPS receivers and mapping software mostly use decimal degrees; charts, deeds and older equipment use degrees, minutes and seconds, where a minute is a sixtieth of a degree and a second a sixtieth of that.
One second of latitude is about 31 meters, which is roughly the precision the notation carries.