180th meridian

The 180th meridian is the line of longitude 180, which runs mostly through the Pacific Ocean from pole to pole.

In theory, it should be a meridian like any other. In OSM, there's two copies at ±180º degrees longitude, and they mark the end of the world.

Here's the mapnik rendering of the 180th meridian passing through Chukotka.

Contents 1 Sample data 2 Software support 2.1 Renderers 2.2 API 2.3 Editors

Sample data

There's a lake in Chukotka that crosses the meridian at http://openstreetmap.org/browse/way/31254026.

Software support

This section should summarize to what extent various tools deal with the 180th meridian gracefully.

Renderers

All layers on the slippy map appear to have problems with rendering coastline near 180º, and with ways crossing the 180th meridian. The data browser doesn't handle ways crossing the 180th meridian nicely due to a limitation in OpenLayers.

• data browser ticket
• mapnik ticket (lake crosses world)

API

The API map call does not allow for bounding boxes crossing the 180th meridian.

• map call ticket

Editors

All editors treat the 180th meridian as the end of the world, hence have problems editing data that crosses it.

Using some scrolling and zooming, it is possible to edit such data in JOSM to some degree of success. It isn't feasible in Potlatch (example).

• JOSM bug report