What are the lengths of Location Coordinates latitude and longitude

Question

How many digits can latitude and longitude have  before the decimal  and after the decimal  Here is an example I am getting from the location sent by a Windows Phone device  Latitude -63572375290155 Longitude 106744840359415  This is very long and is exceeding my table column size and causes errors

User · Answer

Latitude maximum in total is  9  12 3456789   longitude 10  123 4567890   they both have maximum 7 decimals chars  At least is what i can find in Google Maps     For example  both columns in Rails and Postgresql looks something like this   t decimal  latitude  precision  9  scale  7 t decimal  longitude  precision  10  scale  7

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If the latitude coordinate is reported as -6 3572375290155 or -63 572375290155 in decimal degrees then you could round-off and store up to 6 decimal places for 10 cm  or 0 1 meters  precision  Overview The valid range of latitude in degrees is -90 and  90 for the southern and northern hemisphere respectively  Longitude is in the range -180 and  180 specifying coordinates west and east of the Prime Meridian  respectively  For reference  the Equator has a latitude of 0    the North pole has a latitude of 90   north  written 90   N or  90     and the South pole has a latitude of -90    The Prime Meridian has a longitude of 0   that goes through Greenwich  England  The International Date Line  IDL  roughly follows the 180   longitude  A longitude with a positive value falls in the eastern hemisphere and the negative value falls in the western hemisphere  Decimal degrees precision Six  6  decimal places precision in coordinates using decimal degrees notation is at a 10 cm  or 0 1 meters  resolution  Each  000001 difference in coordinate decimal degree is approximately 10 cm in length  For example  the imagery of Google Earth and Google Maps is typically at the 1-meter resolution  and some places have a higher resolution of 1 inch per pixel  One meter resolution can be represented using 5 decimal places so more than 6 decimal places are extraneous for that resolution  The distance between longitudes at the equator is the same as latitude  but the distance between longitudes reaches zero at the poles as the lines of meridian converge at that point  For millimeter  mm  precision then represent lat lon with 8 decimal places in decimal degrees format  Since most applications don t need that level of precision 6 decimal places is sufficient for most cases  In the other direction  whole decimal degrees represent a distance of  111 km  or 60 nautical miles  and a 0 1 decimal degree difference represents a  11 km distance  Here is a table of   decimal places difference in latitude with the delta degrees and the estimated distance in meters using 0 0 as the starting point      Decimal places Decimal degrees Distance  meters       1 0 10000000 11 057 43 11 km   2 0 01000000 1 105 74 1 km   3 0 00100000 110 57    4 0 00010000 11 06    5 0 00001000 1 11    6 0 00000100 0 11 11 cm   7 0 00000010 0 01 1 cm   8 0 00000001 0 001 1 mm    Degrees-minute-second  DMS  representation For DMS notation 1 arc second   1 60 60 degree    30 meter length and 0 1 arc sec delta is  3 meters  Example   0   0  0 quot  W  0   0  0 quot  N   0   0  0 quot  W  0   0  1 quot  N   30 715 meters 0   0  0 quot  W  0   0  0 quot  N   0   0  0 quot  W  0   0  0 1 quot  N   3 0715 meters  1 arc minute   1 60 degree    2000m  2km   Update  Here is an amusing comic strip about coordinate precision

User · Answer

Valid longitudes are from -180 to 180 degrees   Latitudes are supposed to be from -90 degrees to 90 degrees  but areas very near to the poles are not indexable   So exact limits  as specified by EPSG 900913   EPSG 3785   OSGEO 41001 are the following    Valid longitudes are from -180 to 180 degrees  Valid latitudes are from -85 05112878 to 85 05112878 degrees

User · Answer

The ideal datatype for storing Lat Long values in SQL Server is decimal 9 6   As others have said  this is at approximately 10cm precision  whilst only using 5 bytes of storage   e g  CAST 123 456789 as decimal 9 6   as  LatOrLong

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I am aware there are already several answers  but I added this  as this adds substantial information about the decimal places and hence the asked maximum length   The length of latitude and langitude depend on precision  The absolute maximum length for each is    Latitude  12 characters  example  -90 00000001  Longitude  13 characters  example  -180 00000001    For both holds  a maximum of 8 decial places is possible  though not commonly used    Explanation for the dependency on precision     See the full table at Decimal degrees article on Wikipedia

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Please check the UTM coordinate system https   en wikipedia org wiki Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system   These values must be in meters for a specific map projection  For example  the peak of Mount Assiniboine  at 50  52 10 N 115  39 03 W  in UTM Zone 11 is represented by 11U 594934 108296 5636174 091274 where  594934 108296  5636174 091274  are in meters

User · Answer

Google Maps actually uses signed values to represent the position   Latitude   max min 90 0000000 to -90 0000000  Longitude   max min 180 0000000 to -180 0000000   So if you want to work with Coordinates in your projects you would need DECIMAL 10 7  ie  for SQL

[database-design] What are the lengths of Location Coordinates, latitude and longitude?

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