Antipode Calculator
This antipode calculator finds the point on the exact opposite side of the Earth from any location you enter, the place you would reach if you drilled a straight tunnel through the centre of the planet and came out the other side. That opposite point is called the antipode, and it is the single farthest spot on the surface you can be from where you started. You give the calculator a latitude and a longitude in decimal degrees, using positive numbers for north and east and negative numbers for south and west, and it returns the antipodal coordinates along with which hemispheres they fall in and how far away the point sits across the surface. The maths is simple once you see it: the antipode flips the latitude to the opposite hemisphere and rotates the longitude halfway around the globe by 180 degrees. People use this to settle the popular myth about digging to the other side of the world, to plan the two farthest points of a round the world trip, or just out of curiosity about what lies beneath their feet. New Zealanders are often surprised to learn that their antipodes land in Spain, Portugal or the Atlantic rather than in a random ocean. Enter your coordinates below to see the exact point on the far side of the world.
Latitude runs from minus 90 to 90 and longitude from minus 180 to 180. The surface distance to any antipode is always half the Earth's circumference, about 20,015 km. Positions are approximate.
How it works
The antipode of a point is directly opposite it through the centre of the Earth, so it always lies in the opposite hemisphere both north to south and east to west. To find it, change the sign of the latitude, then shift the longitude by 180 degrees: subtract 180 from an eastern (positive) longitude or add 180 to a western (negative) one, keeping the answer inside the minus 180 to 180 range. Because the antipode is diametrically opposite, the distance to it across the surface is always half the Earth's great circle, roughly 20,015 km, no matter where you start.
Worked example
Take Auckland at 36.8485 south and 174.7633 east. Flipping the latitude gives 36.8485 north. The longitude is east, so subtract 180: 174.7633 minus 180 is minus 5.2367, which is 5.2367 west. The antipode is therefore 36.8485 north, 5.2367 west, sitting near the Strait of Gibraltar off southern Spain, about 20,015 km away across the surface.
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