Re: Web sites for worldwide latitude & longitude

Richard Clark (rclarke@mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Wed, 20 Jan 1999 12:58:12 -0500 (EST)

In addition to EtakGuide there is also the Tiger map system at the
Census Department. But they are both US only systems.

tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl
www.etakguide.com

I recently checked and both Map Quest and Map Blast are lacking this
useful feature.

When using a generic lat/lon for a city you may have to worry about the
finite extent of the city. There are a few US cities that not only cover a
large area but also are highly asymetric. Kansas City Mo., Tulsa, both of
the Twin Cities come to mind. So it can be important to know just what
point within the city is used for the city's lat/lon in a table. In the US
it has traditionally been the city's main post office. Except sometimes
it's the airport.

Hay, it matters to someone who lives there!

I guess the important thing is that sites like Chris' prediction
service do allow the user to input their own coordinates.

The best source (non electronic) for coordinates are indices and maps from
the aviation community. Extensive lists of airport coordinates throughout
the world have been compiled and should be available in most major public
libraries of the world. There is also a series of reginnal and tactical
flight planning maps covering virtually the entire world at 1:500K and
much of it at 1:250K. I have found that this series of maps can be the
best starting point when trying to get detailed coverage of someplace
'exotic' because of their large scale and uniformity of global coverage.
In the industrialized world they can be obtained through most map stores
(but plan on a special order). In the US they can be ordered directly
from... I think it's the Defense Mapping Agency. Can also contact local
airports. They will stock maps for only their own areas, but could give
you pointers where to find other areas.

On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Mark A. Hanning-Lee wrote:
> 
> See also EtakGuide http://www.etakguide.com which lets you give a street
> address for the USA and get a lat / long. If you just give the city
> name, it'll give the geographic center of the zip code. You can then
> zoom out & zoom back into the interesting area.
> 
> You may have to scroll up & down a bit to find the search results on the
> search page.
> 
> Mark

Richard Clark
rclarke@mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov