Antipode Maps
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Antipode Maps

For every point on earth, there is another point exactly opposite, the farthest point on earth away from you.  That point is called the antipode.  I recently bought a GPS receiver (Garmin etrex), so I measured the location of my house, and made a map of the point exactly opposite - it's nothing exciting, just a spot in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  Here are the maps.

From http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AntipodalPoints.html:

Given a point on a sphere with latitude δ and longitude λ, the antipodal point has latitude -δ and longitude λ±180° (where the sign is taken so that the result is between -180° and +180°).

Also, see http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzantipode.htm

Here are four locations on earth that have the same latitude/longitude coordinates, with the signs flipped.  One is my house:

My House: N 33.9105°, W -118.0173°		N 33.9105°, E 118.0173°
S -33.9105°, E 118.0173°		S -33.9105°, W -118.0173°

Pretty much all of the continental United States has antipodal points in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  There are two small islands in that ocean, however, Ile Amsterdam and Ile St. Paul, owned by France.  The antipodal points for these islands land in rural Colorado:

(From http://www.ndsu.edu/subantarctic/ile_amsterdam.htm)

Antipodal points for Ile Amsterdam (Mapquest Map of N 37°50', W -103°35') and
Ile St. Paul (Mapquest Map of N 38°43', W -103°31')

There's also Kerguelen Island, which has it's antipode on the Montana-Alberta border, and some tiny islands off its northern coast which have antipodes in Montana.  I don't have a map, but here's what looks like the official site. (Thanks to B. Lehman for the info).

Here are some other interesting facts and links:

• There's a place in the South Pacific Ocean that is 1,600 miles (2,575 kilometers) from any land. It's at 47°30' South and 120° West - that's the place in the ocean that is farthest from land.
• There's a place in northern China that is over 1,600 miles (2,575 kilometers) from any ocean. It's at 46°17' North, 86°40' East - that's the place on land that is farthest from the ocean.
• http://www.geocaching.com/
• http://www.confluence.org/
• The geographic center of the contiguous (lower) 48 states is about four miles west of Lebanon, Kansas, at 98°35' West 39°50' North.

And here's the map I was looking for the whole time:

It's from http://peakbagger.com/pbgeog/worldrev.aspx (there's a list of antipodal cities, too).

Update October 2006: I discovered a Wikipedia article about antipodes.

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Created and maintained by Matthew Weathers. Last updated Oct 21, 2006.