Latitude Longitude Distance Area And More

Google™ Maps contains a lot of information.  Google has understandably opted to present the most popular features such as street maps, address search, and driving directions upfront and center which leaves a lot of neat and useful features somewhat obscured in the background. This has given rise to many third party websites that specialize in providing secondary but still sought-after features of Google Maps.

AtLongLat.com

One such website is AtLongLat.com.  As the name implies, AtLongLat.com specializes in providing latitude and longitude information as well as other geospatial features that are closely related to latitude and longitude.

At the time of this writing, AtLongLat.com provides capabilities to determine latitude and longitude of any point on the map, geocoding street addresses, reverse geocoding locations on the map, measuring the length and heading of multiple paths on the map, measuring the surface area of multiple areas on the map and locating named places of interest on the map.

AtLongLat provides 4 different map modes. These are Latitude Longitude, Distance, Area, and Places. 

In Latitude Longitude mode text box overlays on the map show the real time coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the cursor and the marker. This mode also offers street address geocoding and reverse geocoding.  Geocoding is the process of pinpointing the latitude and longitude of a street address on the map. Reverse geocoding is the process of determinig a street address, if any, from a latitude and longitude coordinate.

In the Distance mode the length of one or more straight line segments can be measured aerially. The distance does not take into account the increase in length from topographical elevation variations. This mode is useful in finding any distance parallel to earth at a constant elevation.  For example, I always heard that Verrazano Narrows bridge was the longest bridge in the New York area. Using this tool, I was able to determine that this bridge has a span of about 1 mile over water.

In the Area mode the surface area of one or more closed boundaries can be measured. For example I often wonder how big the lot size of my neighborhood houses are. The following video shows how the lot size of our most famous neighbor at the White House can be measured.  As you can see, the White House lot is around 20 to 21 acres. Of course this assertion depends on what boundaries are used to define the "White House lot". We used the area that we believe represents the fenced-in area.

The accuracy of distance and area measurements depend on how accurately the overlays are positioned and how far the measurements are from the equator.  In general, projection distortion becomes more of a factor as one moves away from the equator. To evaluate Area accuracy, we selected Colorado for its nice straight boundary lines and zoomed in to place the overlay of the area as accurately as possible.  The measurement came within 0.2% of the published area of Colorado.

Places mode provides the ability to find locations by name. In most cases, for smaller places such as buildings, it is easier to have the map at mid to high zoom level before using the Places mode to find the place on the map.

AtLongLang.com also contains help pages illustrating the usage of each map mode as well as a page dedicated to explaining the terminology used on the website.  The following video shows this help page entitled Rhumb Lines, Great Circles and Geodesics.