Equator Map: Where the Equator Is & the Countries It Crosses

What Is the Equator?

The equator is the circle around Earth at 0° latitude, the set of every point exactly halfway between the North Pole and the South Pole. It lies in the plane through Earth's center at right angles to the axis Earth spins on, so it is fixed by the planet's rotation rather than chosen by people. Everything north of it is the Northern Hemisphere and everything south of it is the Southern Hemisphere.

Latitude is measured from the equator: a place at 40° N is 40 degrees of arc north of it, and the poles are at 90°. Of all the parallels (lines of constant latitude), the equator is the only one that is a great circle, a circle whose center is the center of Earth. That makes it the longest parallel: about 40,075 km (24,902 miles) on the WGS84 ellipsoid that GPS uses, which is simply 2π times the equatorial radius of 6,378.137 km.

The name comes from the medieval Latin aequator, “the equalizer,” because when the Sun is over the equator day and night are about equal everywhere. Astronomers project the same circle onto the sky as the celestial equator, the path the Sun crosses at the March and September equinoxes.

The equator is also where Earth is widest. Rotation flattens the planet slightly, so the equatorial radius is about 21 km longer than the polar radius, and a trip around the equator is about 67 km longer than a trip around the globe through both poles.

Where Is the Equator on a Map?

On a world map the equator is the horizontal line at 0° latitude. On the interactive map above it is the solid orange line, and the dashed lines about 23.44° above and below it are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The static map below the country table shades the land it crosses and numbers each country from west to east.

The equator is not always drawn across the middle of the page. Web maps in the Mercator projection, including this one, cut off at the same latitude north and south, so the equator sits in the center. Many printed wall maps trim most of Antarctica and keep more of the Arctic, which pushes the equator below the middle and makes the northern continents look larger than they are. If you want to compare sizes fairly, use an equal-area view such as the true country size comparison.

Following the line eastward from the Pacific: it crosses the Galápagos Islands and mainland Ecuador just north of Quito, runs through the Amazon rainforest of southern Colombia and northern Brazil, and reaches the Atlantic at the mouth of the Amazon near Macapá. It passes the islet of Ilhéu das Rolas off São Tomé, enters Africa on the coast of Gabon, and crosses the Congo Basin, Lake Victoria and the Kenyan highlands before reaching the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia. It then slips between the southern atolls of the Maldives, crosses Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and Halmahera in Indonesia, and spends the rest of its length in the open Pacific, through the waters of Kiribati and close to the US islands of Baker and Jarvis.

Any coordinate with latitude 0 is on the equator, whatever the longitude. You can check a place with the latitude and longitude finder, or measure how far it is from the line with the distance to the equator calculator.

Countries on the Equator

The equator passes through 13 countries. In 10 of them it crosses land; in the other 3 (São Tomé and Príncipe, the Maldives and Kiribati) it crosses only the country's waters. The table above lists the longitude where the line enters and leaves each country, computed from Natural Earth 1:50m boundaries.

South America

Ecuador is named after the line and has it twice: across Isabela Island in the Galápagos and across the mainland a few kilometers north of Quito, about 552 km of land in total. Colombia follows with about 607 km of Amazon rainforest, then Brazil, where the equator crosses about 2,179 km (1,354 miles) of land, more than any other country, ending at the river islands near Macapá. In total about 3,338 km of the equator is South American land.

Africa

Africa holds the longest unbroken land stretch. From the Atlantic coast of Gabon at about 9.3° E to the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia at about 42.9° E, the line crosses the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (about 1,326 km), Uganda and Kenya without touching the sea, roughly 3,734 km including the waters of Lake Victoria. Offshore, São Tomé and Príncipe is crossed at Ilhéu das Rolas, an islet too small to appear in world-scale data.

Asia and Oceania

In the Indian Ocean the equator runs through the Maldives between Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah without touching an island. Indonesia is crossed in 8 separate sections, about 1,439 km of land on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Halmahera and smaller islands; the city of Pontianak on Borneo sits almost exactly on it. Far out in the Pacific, Kiribati spans the equator with island groups on both sides, but no Kiribati island lies on the line itself.

The longest national stretch belongs to Brazil. The equator does not cross the United States, Australia, India or any country in Europe or North America.

Equator Facts

• Mostly water. About 79% of the equator crosses ocean. In our data it crosses about 8,509 km (5,287 miles) of land, 21.2% of its length, in 21 separate sections.
• Fastest ground speed. Earth turns once every 23 hours 56 minutes relative to the stars, so a point on the equator moves east at about 1,674 km/h (1,040 mph). At 60° latitude it is half that.
• Twelve-hour days. Sunrise and sunset stay close to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. local solar time all year; day length changes by only a few minutes. Twilight is short because the Sun rises and sets almost vertically.
• Sun overhead twice a year. At noon on the March and September equinoxes the Sun is directly overhead, and upright objects cast almost no shadow.
• Snow on the line. The south slope of Cayambe volcano in Ecuador, at about 4,690 m, is the highest point on the equator and the only place on it with permanent snow and ice.
• Farthest from Earth's center. Because of the equatorial bulge, the summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador, about 1.5° south of the equator, is the point on Earth's surface farthest from its center, even though Everest is higher above sea level.
• Slightly lighter. Gravity at sea level is about 9.780 m/s² on the equator and 9.832 m/s² at the poles, so you weigh roughly 0.5% less on the equator.
• Good for rockets. Launch sites near the equator, such as Kourou in French Guiana at about 5° N, get the most free eastward speed from Earth's rotation and can reach equatorial orbits without costly plane changes.
• Null Island. The equator meets the prime meridian at 0° N, 0° E in the Gulf of Guinea. Mapping software calls the spot “Null Island” because bad data with missing coordinates often lands there.

Why Is It Hot at the Equator?

The main reason is the angle of sunlight. A beam of sunlight that arrives straight down spreads over the smallest possible area of ground; the same beam arriving at a low angle spreads over a much larger area, so each square meter gets less energy. On the equator the noon Sun is never more than about 23.44° from straight overhead, so the ground is heated strongly every day of the year. At 45° latitude the winter noon Sun is only about 21° above the horizon.

The second reason is that day length barely changes. Higher latitudes have long winter nights that let heat escape; the equator gets about 12 hours of sunlight every day, so there is no cold season. Instead of summer and winter, many equatorial places have wet and dry seasons, set by the band of rising air and thunderstorms called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which follows the Sun north and south through the year.

The equator is not hot everywhere. Temperature drops about 6.5 °C for every 1,000 m of altitude, so Quito, at about 2,850 m, has spring-like weather all year, and the highest volcanoes keep glaciers. Cold ocean currents also matter: the Humboldt Current makes the Galápagos much cooler and drier than other islands at the same latitude. The very highest air temperatures on Earth are measured in subtropical deserts around 20° to 30° from the equator, where dry, cloudless air lets the ground heat up further.

Equator vs Prime Meridian

The equator and the prime meridian are the two zero lines of the coordinate grid, but they are different kinds of line.

The equator has a physical meaning: it is where the Sun can be overhead at the equinoxes and where rotation is fastest. The prime meridian could have been put anywhere; delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference chose the one through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Today's GPS reference meridian runs about 100 meters east of the historic Greenwich line. The two lines cross only at Null Island in the Gulf of Guinea, and they do so at a right angle.

Crossing the Equator: Traditions and Monuments

Sailors have marked their first crossing of the equator for centuries. In the line-crossing ceremony, still held on many navy and training ships, first-timers called “pollywogs” are put through a day of costumed hazing presided over by a crew member playing King Neptune, after which they become “shellbacks” and often receive a certificate. Crossing where the equator meets the International Date Line earns the rarer title of “golden shellback.” Some cruise ships and airlines keep a lighter version, with an announcement or a certificate for passengers.

On land, several places invite visitors to stand with one foot in each hemisphere:

• Mitad del Mundo, Ecuador: the large monument north of Quito, built from an 18th-century French survey. GPS puts latitude 0° about 240 m north of it.
• Marco Zero, Macapá, Brazil: a monument and a football stadium whose halfway line follows the equator.
• Tugu Khatulistiwa, Pontianak, Indonesia: the Equator Monument, where the Sun stands overhead around the equinoxes.
• Kayabwe, Uganda, and Nanyuki, Kenya: roadside markers on major highways.

Some sites stage a demonstration of water draining clockwise on one side of a painted line and counterclockwise on the other. It is a trick: the Coriolis effect is zero on the equator and millions of times too weak to steer water in a basin anywhere. The swirl comes from how the water is poured and the shape of the bowl.

Accuracy Notes

The country table and the land share on this page are computed, not copied from a list: a script intersects latitude 0 with every country polygon in the Natural Earth 1:50m dataset and records where the line enters and leaves land. That makes the numbers consistent with each other, but they inherit the limits of world-scale data.