Question

How to calculate distance given latitude longitude?

Answer 1

Calculate distance, bearing and more between Latitude/Longitude points

This page presents a variety of calculations for lati­tude/longi­tude points, with the formulæ and code fragments for implementing them.

All these formulæ are for calculations on the basis of a spherical earth (ignoring ellipsoidal effects) – which is accurate enough* for most purposes… [In fact, the earth is very slightly ellipsoidal; using a spherical model gives errors typically up to 0.3%1 – see notes for further details].

Great-circle distance between two points

Enter the co-ordinates into the text boxes to try out the calculations. A variety of formats are accepted, principally:

deg-min-sec suffixed with N/S/E/W (e.g. 40°44′55″N, 73 59 11W), orsigned decimal degrees without compass direction, where negative indicates west/south (e.g. 40.7486, -73.9864):Point 1: , Point 2: , Distance:968.9 km (to 4 SF*)Initial bearing:009° 07′ 11″Final bearing:011° 16′ 31″Midpoint:54° 21′ 44″ N, 004° 31′ 50″ W

And you can see it on a map (aren’t those Google guys wonderful!)

Distance

This uses the ‘haversine’ formula to calculate the great-circle distance between two points – that is, the shortest distance over the earth’s surface – giving an ‘as-the-crow-flies’ distance between the points (ignoring any hills they fly over, of course!).

Haversine
formula:a = sin²(Δφ/2) + cos φ1 ⋅ cos φ2 ⋅ sin²(Δλ/2)c = 2 ⋅ atan2( √a, √(1−a) )d = R ⋅ cwhereφ is latitude, λ is longitude, R is earth’s radius (mean radius = 6,371km);
note that angles need to be in radians to pass to trig functions

Answer 2

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Get The Coordinates Of A Place

• On your computer, open G0ogle Maps, you'll see a lightning bolt at the bottom.
• Right‑click the place or area on the map.
• Select What's here?
• At the bottom, you'll see a card with the coordinates.