Minute and second of arc arcsecond on a 10 m class telescope. Minutes (′) and seconds (″) of arc are also used in cartography and navigation. At sea level one minute of arc along the equator or a meridian (indeed, any great circle) equals exactly one geographical mile along the Earth's equator or approximately one nautical mile (1852 meters, or ≈1.15078 statute miles). A second of arc, one sixtieth of this amount, is roughly 30 meters or 100 feet. The exact distance varies along meridian arcs because the figure of the Earth is slightly oblate (bulges a third of a percent at the equator). Positions
History of longitude 2nd century BC Hipparchus was the first to use such a system to uniquely specify places on Earth. He also proposed a system of determining longitude by comparing the local time of a place with an absolute time. This is the first recognition that longitude can be determined by accurate knowledge of time. In the 11th century Al-Biruni believed the earth rotated on its axis and this forms our modern notion of how time and longitude are related. Determining latitude was relatively easy in that it could be found from the altitude of the sun at noon (i.e. at its