180th meridian

The 180th meridian or antimeridian is the meridian 180° both east and west of the prime meridian in a geographical coordinate system. The longitude at this line can be given as either east or west.

On Earth, the prime and 180th meridians form a great circle that divides the planet into the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. The antimeridian passes mostly through the open waters of the Pacific Ocean but also runs across land in Russia, Fiji, and Antarctica. An important function of this meridian is its use as the basis for the International Date Line, which snakes around national borders to maintain date consistency within the territories of Russia, the United States, Kiribati, Fiji and New Zealand.

Starting at the North Pole of the Earth and heading south to the South Pole, the 180th meridian passes through:

The meridian also passes between (but not particularly close to):

• through the Aleutian Island chain of US territory
• the Gilbert Islands and the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati
• North Island and the Kermadec Islands of New Zealand
• the Bounty Islands and the Chatham Islands, also of New Zealand

The only places where roads cross this meridian are in Fiji and Russia. Fiji has several such roads and some buildings very close to it. Russia has three roads in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

Software representation problems

Many geographic software libraries or data formats project the world to a rectangle; very often this rectangle is split exactly at the 180th meridian. This often makes it non-trivial to do simple tasks (like representing an area, or a line) over the 180th meridian. Some examples:

• The GeoJSON specification strongly suggests splitting geometries so that neither of their parts cross the antimeridian.
• In OpenStreetMap, areas (like the boundary of Russia) are split at the 180th meridian.
• QGIS may present lines and polygons in a wrapped way if they cross the 180 meridian.

See also

• 179th meridian east
• 179th meridian west
• Prime meridian
• International Date Line

Notes

1. Prime meridian
2. 90th meridian west
3. Western Hemisphere
4. IERS Reference Meridian
5. 90th meridian east
6. List of countries by westernmost point
7. List of countries by easternmost point
8. Prime meridian (Greenwich)
9. Eastern Hemisphere
10. 135th meridian east
11. Line-crossing ceremony
12. Wrangel Island
13. 2024 Pacific typhoon season
14. Hemispheres of Earth
15. Pacific typhoon season
16. 45th parallel north
17. Time in Kiribati
18. Attu Station, Alaska
19. Universal polar stereographic coordinate system
20. Afro-Eurasia