Earth
As of 2012 the most used prime meridian for the Earth is the IERS Reference Meridian (IRM). It passes about 5.3 arcseconds east of Airy's transit circle or about 102 metres (335 ft) at the latitude of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London. A current convention on the Earth uses the opposite of the IRM as the basis for the International Date Line.
Read more about this topic: Prime Meridian
Famous quotes containing the word earth:
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)