The projection that Google uses in their maps is "World Mercator" which means that longitude and latitude lines are perpendicular to each other. It's an artificial construct, obviously, the earth's latitude and longitude lines converge at the poles so in the maps, as you go north, the distance between longitude lines goes to zero and the error in the apparent map goes to infinity. Any depiction of the earth's surface above about 86 degrees is impossible with this projection.
For your purposes, if you draw a rectangle that consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, it will look rectangular on the map. The distance between the north and south legs of your rectangle will only be equal at very high zooms, above around 15 or so, which is when the maps appear to be in a flat projection. Does this answer your question? -John Coryat http://maps.huge.info http://www.usnaviguide.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
