Finding Your Geographic Coordinates
If you have a GPS unit, you likely are not going to need this page. However, if you do not know your geographic coordinates and need to, here are some suggestions. Keep in mind that coordinates of latitude and longitude may be expressed as degrees:minutes:seconds, or as decimal degrees. If you do not know the difference, you may want to review some reference such as this Wikipedia page: Geographic Coordinate System.
Google Maps
Oddly, Google Maps has no direct method of showing your geographic
coordinates, but you can find them easily. Go to GoogleMaps (maps.google.com)
and enter your address. Wait for the map of your location to show, then hit
"Link to this page" and copy out the URL from the address bar. The
geographic coordinates of the location will be embedded in the URL. Here is
an example with the coordinates for the CCA Observatory:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=39.717381,-104.80412 ... (extraneous material in the URL removed.)
Here's a site that uses Google Maps and lets you zoom in on your location: Satellite Signals.
The observatory coordinates are 39.717381 North Latitude and 104.80412 West Longitude (West is negative). These are in decimal degrees. Note that some webpages and other resources, including iTouchMap.com below, will give coordinates with many more decimal places. However, as far as non-military GPS and online map tools go, 5 decimal places is about the limit of reason.
EarthTools
If you already are reasonably good with maps, go to EarthTools (www.earthtools.org).
Click on "Find Places," and then enter your city (e.g., Aurora,
Colorado, USA). Recenter the image and zoom in, then find your street
address on the resulting map. Double click on your location (on the map) to
center it. The geographic coordinates are displayed in the left-hand menu
page.
Zip Code
Finally, if your exact location is not critical, you can just use the coordinates of the nearest Zip Code post office with this form:
Please enter your Zip Code to retrieve the latitude and longitude of that location.
The latitude and longitude of the nearest Zip Code location should be good enough for most observations.
Note that the latitude and longitude are given in decimal degrees,
rather than the traditional "minutes" and "seconds."
This is generally easier to deal with and useful in most
situations. However, some applications may ask for the latitude and
longitude in the degrees, minutes, seconds format.
And for the map geek in all of us, try iTouchMap.com,
but don't get carried away!
This page will be updated as necessary