50 Fun Facts About The Equator

The Equator divides Earth into which two hemispheres?

It sits at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the poles.

What is the latitude of the Equator?

By definition it is zero degrees of arc; the Tropics sit at about 23.5 degrees.

Roughly how long is the Equator?

That is about 24,900 miles, or 21,639 nautical miles.

The word "equator" comes from a medieval Latin phrase meaning what?

Circulus aequator diei et noctis, from aequare, to make equal.

The Equator is one of five notable lines of latitude. What are the other four?

Only the Equator among them is a great circle whose plane passes through Earth's centre.

What makes the Equator unique among lines of latitude?

A great circle is one whose plane passes through the centre of the globe.

On roughly which two dates does the subsolar point cross the Equator?

On the equinoxes every latitude gets nearly a 12-hour day and 12-hour night.

At the Equator, daylight is slightly longer than night all year. Roughly how much longer?

Atmospheric refraction and measuring from the Sun's upper limb, not its centre, add the extra minutes.

Why are sunrises and sunsets shortest at the Equator?

Noon sunlight there is never more than about 23 degrees from directly overhead.

Earth's diameter at the Equator is roughly how much greater than at the poles?

The planet bulges at its middle; the average diameter is 12,742 km.

Why are spaceports such as the one at Kourou, French Guiana, sited near the Equator?

The surface moves at about 460 metres per second, a free push for eastward launches.

What is the surface rotation speed at the Equator?

That works out to roughly 1,670 km/h.

The equatorial radius adopted by the IAU in 2009 is about how many kilometres?

Multiplying by 2 pi gives an equator of 40,075 km if it were perfectly circular.

Because Earth is flattened, the Equator is longer than a meridian great circle by roughly what percentage?

Earth is modelled as a sphere flattened 0.336 percent along its axis.

A "geographical mile" is defined as what?

It comes to about 1,855 metres, a few metres more than the nautical mile.

Earth's true equatorial plane drifts because the rotation axis wanders. By roughly how much each year?

So the precise location of the Equator is not truly fixed.

What percentage of the Equator's length passes over land?

Roughly 8,714 km of land against 31,361 km of sea.

Through the land of how many sovereign states does the Equator pass?

It also crosses the territorial seas of the Maldives, Kiribati and the United States.

Which country straddles the greatest length of the Equator across land and sea?

The line runs through Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and Halmahera, and the city of Pontianak.

Despite its name, which country lies entirely off the Equator?

Its island of Annobon is 155 km south of the line and the rest of the country is north.

Which island nation lies entirely between 55 and 62 km south of the Equator?

Peru's northernmost point is even closer, just 4.3 km south of the line.

The Equator crosses the territorial sea of the United States near which uninhabited Pacific possession?

It also passes just south of Buariki in Kiribati and south of Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll in the Maldives.

Which country's name literally means "Equator" in Spanish?

It was truncated from Republica del Ecuador, taken from a department of Gran Colombia set up in 1824.

The Marco Zero monument marks the Equator in which Brazilian state capital?

The line runs precisely through the monument and along the Avenue Equatorial in Amapa state.

Which Indonesian provincial capital on Borneo sits directly on the Equator?

A monument there marks the line in West Kalimantan.

Which great African body of fresh water does the Equator cross, passing through Ugandan islands?

The line runs about 32 km south of Kampala and 6 km north of Kisumu in Kenya.

The Equator passes over the highest mountain of which African country?

Mount Kenya straddles the line; the Equator also passes just north of Kisumu.

The Equator crosses which island of the Galapagos?

It is the largest island in the archipelago, which belongs to Ecuador.

The Equator crosses Sao Tome and Principe on which islet, home to a resort?

It is the first land the line meets heading east from the Prime Meridian.

Where the Equator meets the Prime Meridian in the Gulf of Guinea, mapping software jokingly places what?

There is no land there, only a weather buoy; the name traps database entries wrongly given coordinates 0,0.

The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo monument, marking the Equator, stands about 26 km north of which capital city?

Tourists pose straddling its painted line, which GPS shows to be about 240 metres off.

By how much does the Mitad del Mundo line miss the true WGS84 Equator?

The pre-Columbian Catequilla ruins nearby turn out to sit exactly on latitude zero.

How tall is the Mitad del Mundo monument built between 1979 and 1982?

It is topped by a 4.5-metre globe weighing five tonnes.

The 18th-century French Geodesic Mission to Quito set out to settle what question?

A sister expedition went to Lapland with Anders Celsius; together they proved the planet is oblate.

Which French scientist led the Geodesic Mission to the Equator and later travelled down the Amazon?

Pierre Bouguer and Louis Godin were his colleagues, with Spaniards Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa.

The Geodesic Mission's measurements between Quito and Cuenca eventually helped define which unit?

In 1799 the metre was set as one ten-millionth of the half meridian from pole to Equator.

Which Ecuadorian volcano's summit is the farthest point on Earth's surface from the planet's centre, thanks to the equatorial bulge?

At 6,263 m it is far lower than Everest above sea level, but sits on the bulge.

The highest point on the Equator, and the only place on the line with snow on the ground, is on the slopes of which volcano?

The line crosses at 4,690 metres, just above the snow line, in Ecuador.

What climate do lowlands around the Equator generally have?

Rainfall runs 2,500 to 3,500 mm a year, with about 200 rainy days.

Which equatorial region has an arid climate despite its location, because of the Somali Current and the Asian monsoon?

Cold ocean currents also give some equatorial coasts a dry season.

What is the typical afternoon temperature in equatorial lowlands?

Sunrise temperatures average about 23 C; there is little change through the year.

Sailors call the windless band near the Equator where the trade winds converge the doldrums. What is its meteorological name?

It appears as a band of thunderstorms encircling the globe and shifts with the seasons.

Do bathtubs and toilets really drain in opposite directions on either side of the Equator?

The drain's shape and the water's leftover motion swamp any Coriolis effect.

In the US Navy, what are sailors called before they have crossed the Equator?

After the ceremony they become Trusty Shellbacks or Sons of Neptune.

Which mythological figure presides over the traditional line-crossing ceremony?

His court usually includes Davy Jones and Amphitrite, played by senior shellbacks.

What is a sailor who has crossed the Equator at the 180th meridian called?

Crossing at the Prime Meridian earns the rarer Emerald (US) or Royal Diamond (Commonwealth) Shellback.

Which famous naturalist was the first "griffin" ducked when HMS Beagle crossed the line in February 1832?

His face was lathered with pitch and paint and scraped with a rough hoop before he was tipped into a bath.

On Cook's Endeavour in 1768, those who had never crossed the line could avoid a ducking by giving up what for four days?

Joseph Banks recorded that the crew even listed the ship's cats and dogs for interrogation.

Which US president described his crossing-the-line ceremony aboard USS Indianapolis in a 1936 letter to his wife?

He called it the "Happy Ship" and his shipmates the "Jolly Companions".

In the Royal Canadian Navy, what are sailors who have not yet crossed the Equator nicknamed?

An earlier nickname was "griffins", the term also used on the Beagle.