Description: The equator is an imaginary line running around Earth, equidistant from the North and South Poles and perpendicular to the Earth's rotation axis. The equator marks the line on the Earth's surface furthest from the rotation axis. At the poles the rotation axis intersects with the surface. In the latitude and longitude coordinate system on the Earth's surface, the equator is defined as having zero degrees latitude. The equator divides the Earth into a northern and a southern hemisphere. Places in the northern hemisphere have positive latitude; places in the southern hemisphere have negative latitude.

Related Terms:

• Axis
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Polar Circle
• Day
• Earth's Axis
• Night
• Tropic
• North Pole
• South Pole

Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher

The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".