What is the line of longitude lying at 0 degrees known as
Longitude practice to use a nation's capital as the starting point, but other locations were also used. While British cartographers had long used the Greenwich meridian in London, other references were used elsewhere, including El Hierro, Rome, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Saint Petersburg, Pisa, Paris (see the article "Paris meridian"), Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. In 1884 the International Meridian Conference adopted the Greenwich meridian as the "universal Prime Meridian" or "zero point of longitude". Longitude is given as an angular measurement ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° eastward and −180° westward. The Greek letter λ (lambda), is used to denote
Longitude Longitude Longitude (, ), is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter lambda (λ). Meridians (lines running from pole to pole) connect points with the same longitude. By convention, one of these, the Prime Meridian, which passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England, was allocated the position of 0° longitude. The longitude of other places is measured as the angle east or west from the Prime Meridian, ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° eastward