Although it is more than 40,000km long, there are surprisingly few towns along the line – much of its length consists of ocean, and on land it crosses large expanses of tropical rainforest.

We start our journey, appropriately enough, in the country named after its location: Ecuador. Perhaps the best known monument marking the equator is Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World), just outside the capital, Quito. These days, GPS-laden tourists are often alarmed to find that the true zero line appears to be 240 metres north of the line on the ground.

It’s all a question of which map datum¹ you use: The Global Positioning System, along with most online maps, uses the WGS84 datum. So, in the same way that the Greenwich meridian is 100 metres or so away from GPS 0° longitude, the GPS equator (shown in red below) is somewhat north of the Mitad del Mundo line (in blue).

Just to the northeast of the offical Mitad del Mundo monument is a small private museum called Inti-Ñan, which claims to be on the “real” equator. It is, but only on an older datum called SAD69 (shown in yellow). Your GPS won’t read zero until you walk into the main road outside.

Heading eastwards through Ecuador, we soon come to the highest point on the equator, and the only place on the line with permanent snow cover: Volcán Cayambe. The summit, just inside the northern hemisphere, is 5,790 metres above sea level; the highest point on the equator itself is some 1,100 metres lower.

On the other side of South America, in the city of Macapá in Brazil, we find a football² stadium supposedly built right on the equator, with one half of the pitch in each hemisphere. This is the Estádio Milton Corrêa, better known as the Zerão (”Big Zero”), and it’s only slightly marred by the fact that the WGS84 equator actually runs just past the southern end of the pitch. A little way to the east, along Avenida Equatorial, is a monument known as Marco Zero.

Next we cross the Atlantic to Africa. A popular tourist stop in Kenya is this layby on the outskirts of Nanyuki, where a sign (arrowed) marks the location of the equator. In this case it’s pretty accurate, being just 20 metres or so south of the WGS84 line. You can usually find enterprising locals here willing, for a few shillings, to “demonstrate” how water flows down the plughole in opposite directions either side of the line. However, it’s an urban myth and the demonstration is all down to sleight of hand.

Our last location is in Indonesia, in Pontianak on the island of Borneo. Built in 1990, the Equator Monument is a replica of the marker first erected in the 1920s by Dutch surveyors. It’s five times the size of the original, but again it’s disappointing to note that it is 120 metres too far north, according to GPS.

One final Google oddity – if you search for the location “0,0″, then as you’d expect you get a placemark at the intersection of the equator and the Greenwich meridian, off the coast of west Africa. What’s more unexpected is the address that is given: 23208 Glenbrook St, St Clair Shores, Michigan. Is this unassuming neighbourhood the real centre of the universe?

Locations: Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya / Categories: Monuments, Weirdness

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On September 29, 2009, just south of the islands that make up the Independent State of Samoa in Polynesia, an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Moment Magnitude scale occurred, which generated a tsunami that swept across the nearby islands killing at least 149 people.

Most of the victims were on Samoa itself, where reports of a wave between 3 and 10 metres have emerged. Many low-lying areas in the Samoan islands have been completely destroyed, including the Prime Minister’s home village of Lepa.

Several other Polynesian islands were affected including the Unincorporated U.S. Territory of American Samoa to the east, where they lost at least 25 people, and to the south Tonga, where 6 people are so far known to have died.

Just 16 hours after the Samoan tsunami, another large earthquake occurred just off the southern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. This eruption registered a lower moment magnitude reading of 7.6, but even without a tsunami has still claimed at least 1,100 lives.

Separated by 9,749 km, these two earthquakes were unrelated. They also lie on separate faults; Samoa sits just north of the Tonga Trench, and Sumatra is located on one of the world’s most active fault lines, the Great Sumatran fault.

What the two earthquakes do share however, is that all the affected islands fall within the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 40,000 km long horseshoe-shaped region that is defined by a nearly continuous path of volcanic features, including 452 volcanoes. 75% of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes are located within the region, and together they are responsible for about 90% of the world’s earthquakes.

More information is available at Wikipedia about the 2009 Samoa earthquake, the 2009 Padang earthquake, and the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Locations: Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Samoa, Unincorporated territory of the U.S. / Categories: Islands, Volcanoes

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With over 200 million Muslims in a country whose “religious freedom” is mere decades old it is not difficult to see the significance of these Muslim, Hindu, and Christian influenced buildings.

What you don’t expect to see in the heart of Indonesia is a 100 year old Catholic cathedral. Yet, there it is.

The Central Catholic Cathedral (Gereja Katedral) is the seat of the Archbishop of Jakarta. The current building is a rebuild of the original that was burnt down in the mid-1800s. On Christmas Eve, 2004, the church was the target of a blast bomb attack.

What you do expect to see in a highly populated Muslim country is a mosque. Just a 150 meters from the great doors of the Cathedral are the great halls of the largest mosque in Southeast Asia.

What is significant about The Independence Mosque (Istiqlal Mosque), besides its size, is that its designer was not a Muslim at all. In fact, he was a Christian architect that won the job as part of a contest held by the government in the 1960s. The mosque would take 17 years to build.

Just one block away from The Independence, the same Christian architect, Frederich Silaban, designed another one of Jakarta’s treasured monuments, the National Monument (Monumen Nasional or MONAS); this time taking his influences primarily from the Hindu religion.

Taking 14 years to build, the National Monment is a 137m tall tower that supposedly symbolises the fight for Indonesia’s independence. Visitors generally stand for hours in long lines while they wait to ride up the old, rickety 11-passenger elevator up the deliberately phallic-looking shaft to the central viewing platform. The design of the monument supposedly “combines elements of the male and female physiology”, symbolising fertility in the Hindu-Javanese tradition.

All three of these religiously influenced buildings demonstrate, to a certain extent, Indonesia’s religious tolerance. For if we just cross the street from the National Monument, we will come upon the Presidential Palace (Istana Merdeka) and the Supreme Court of Justice (Mahkama Agung); arguably the nation’s most important political buildings.

The Presidential Palace / The Supreme Court of Justice

From the viewing platform of the National Monument tourists can photograph all of the buildings discussed here within a single panoramic frame. The President’s home, the Supreme Court, the largest mosque in SE Asia, and the central Catholic cathedral all from an Hindu-influenced monument. An impressive vista for sure.

Thanks to Perry Ismangil.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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Inside each of the smaller, cage-like stupas sits a statue of Buddha, but in total there are actually 504 statues of Buddha here.

Borobudur (Ground-level photo)

The temple, known as a candi (chan-dee) in Javanese, was re-discovered in 1814 when then-British ruler, Sir Thomas Raffles, was advised by locals as to its presence. It laid hidden for many years, covered in jungle growth and volcanic ash. Raffles ordered a restoration that would last through the next 170 years.

Early in the 1900’s, during one of the renovation periods, two smaller candis built using the same style were found to Borobudur’s northeast:

Candi Pawon (Ground-level photo), and Candi Mendut (Ground-level photo)

All told, the three candis sit about two and half miles apart: from Borobudur to Mendut, with Pawon sitting in the middle. What is most interesting though, is that all three are arranged in a perfect line. Pretty impressive given that this was done without the power of Google Earth – 1100 years ago!

Today Borobudur is the number one tourist destination in Indonesia, receiving several million visitors each year.

There are loads of cool-looking HDR photos available over at Stuck in Customs, and of course Wikipedia has more information as ever.

See also our previous coverage on Angkor Wat, a similarly styled Buddhist temple in Cambodia.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Monuments

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Reader aliosha was browsing the atlantic and discovered a bizarre grid pattern in the deep.

About 150 km square, it presumably isn’t a natural occurrence, but what else could create such a pattern it what must be extremely-deep water?

Even more bizarre, off the coast of Indonesia is what would easily be the largest writing on the planet. At around 130 km wide, it would dwarf second place by a factor of about 30x.

Unfortunately, it is only the largest writing on Google Earth, as this message doesn’t actually exist.

It says “DTS/SIO”, and was added by David T. Sandwell (DTS), a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).

The sea bed imagery comes from a variety of bathymetry sources, including the SIO, and Mr Sandwell added the false underwater canyons so that they could see where the SIO’s data was being used.

Thanks to aliosha and GEarth Blog (who also have news of a special event Google are hosting next week in relation to oceans on Google Earth).

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Large Type, Natural Landmarks, Weirdness

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The eruption of August 27, 1883 was so immense that it easily tops the loudest recorded noise in human history, being heard clearly over 5000 km away.

Around a trillion cubic feet of rock, pumice and ash was thrown up into the air, affecting global weather systems and even painting the sky red¹.

When it erupted, two-thirds of the island which Krakatoa occupied was blown apart and caused massive tidal waves, killing thousands of people.

The remains of that original Kraktoa Island is actually 5 km to south and the island which Kraktoa now occupies was “self-built”. Created from subsequent eruptions it broke the surface in 1928 and was dubbed “Anak Krakatau”, or “Child of Krakatoa”.

As we can see “Anak Krakatau” continues to expand, having increased in size by about 5 inches per week since the 1950s.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Volcanoes

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Semeru has reportedly been in a state of almost continuous eruption since 1967, and was clearly not having a day off on the day that these truly stunning images were taken.

(Wikipedia, aerial photo)

Thanks to TexasAndroid.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Volcanoes

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Mount Tambora is an active volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, which is noted for the largest and deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

The eruption occurred in 1815, and could allegedly be heard from over 2000 km away. Lasting 5 days, the volcanic activity removed 1500 m of the volcano’s height, sent 2.5 million tons of ash into the air, and left a 7 km wide caldera behind.

The massive amount of extra dust in the atmosphere actually caused the temperature to fall worldwide, and 1816 became known as the Year Without a Summer, when crops and livestock died in much of the northern hemisphere – resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.

Some 10,000 people are thought to have died directly as a result of the eruption, but factoring in the related famine and disease brings the total to at least 71,000 deaths.

You can read more about Mount Tambora and the Volcanic Explosivity Index on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Tim, Paul Drye, and Pedro Cristian.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Islands, Natural Landmarks, Volcanoes

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Here in the Mentawai Islands of West Sumatra, Indonesia there is a tiny, seemingly unnamed, almost totally-forested island.

The only thing on this island, other than trees, is a mysterious, lonely white monument. But what is it?

Our mystery island is just to the south of the much larger island of Hilibafunua (about which I have failed to find anything interesting), but north of the even larger Siberut – an island that is home to a 1,905 km² National Park and inhabited by the Mentawai, a tribe of hunter-gatherers who like to sharpen their teeth.

Our mystery monument hasn’t been posted on the Google Earth Forums (it would show up in the Google Earth Community layer in Google Earth if it had), and I can’t find any reference to it on the web, at least not in English.

So, who can tell us what this is, or even better, locate a photograph of it?

Thanks to Smiglo.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Islands, Monuments, Shadows

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Despite a network of dams and barriers having been erected to contain the flood, as of February 2007 the mud was up to 10 m thick, with an estimated volume of 12 million cubic metres. The enormous quantity of mud has so far buried 4 villages and 25 factories, some of which you can see here, barely protruding above the surface.

Although the mud flow is one of many Mud Volcanoes found worldwide, this particularly devastating eruption is actually the result of nearby gas exploration. The drilling activity evidently triggered an “underground blow out” which apparently could have been prevented if the proper safety procedures had been observed.

The oil and gas exploration company deemed culpable for this, one of Indonesia’s worst ever industrial disasters, will be responsible for financing the repairs and compensating the victims (if they don’t manage to weasel out of it that is). Additionally, thirteen executives and engineers now face criminal charges.

Various ideas have been posited that might staunch the flow of mud (or alternatively put it to some use), however so far, all attempts to stop it have failed. Have a look at this photo from a couple of weeks ago¹ to see how much further the mud has spread – and it’s believed that it will keep flowing for years to come.

Read more at Wikipedia. Thanks to Adrian.

Locations: Indonesia / Categories: Buildings, Natural Landmarks, Volcanoes

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