Decimal Degrees - Example

Example

The decimal degree representation of the location of the United States Capitol is:

38.889722°, -77.008889°

In most systems, such as Google Maps, the degree symbol is omitted and thus the coordinates are expressed as "38.889722, -77.008889".

A DMS value is converted to decimal degrees using the formula:

The decimal degree representation for the location of the United States Capitol of

38° 53′ 23″ N, 77° 00′ 32″ W

is:

38.889722°, -77.008889°

To calculate the D, M and S components, the following formulas can be used:

\mathrm{DD} = \begin{cases} \mathrm{D} &= \operatorname{trunc}(\mathrm{DD}) \\ \mathrm{M} &= \operatorname{trunc}(|\mathrm{DD}| \cdot 60) \bmod 60 \\ \mathrm{S} &= \left(|\mathrm{DD}| \cdot 3600 \right) \bmod 60 \end{cases}

where |DD| is the absolute value of DD, trunc is the truncation function, and mod is the modulo operator. Note that with this formula, only S may have a fractional value.

Read more about this topic:  Decimal Degrees

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