Lat Long to Minutes and Seconds?

Ian Vink picture Ian Vink · Jan 13, 2010 · Viewed 12.7k times · Source

Google Maps gives me the Lat and Long of a location in decimal notation like this:

38.203655,-76.113281

How do I convert those to Coords (Degrees, Minutes , Seconds)

Answer

liwp picture liwp · Jan 13, 2010

38.203655 is a decimal value of degrees. There are 60 minutes is a degree and 60 seconds in a minute (1degree == 60min == 3600s).

So take the fractional part of the value, i.e. 0.203655, and multiply it with 60 to get minutes, i.e. 12.2193, which is 12 minutes, and then repeat for the fractional part of minutes, i.e. 0.2193 = 13.158000 seconds.

Example in python:

def deg_to_dms(deg):
    d = int(deg)
    md = abs(deg - d) * 60
    m = int(md)
    sd = (md - m) * 60
    return [d, m, sd]

print deg_to_dms(38.203655)
print deg_to_dms(-76.113281)