The equator is the largest circle on Earth. No one has ever managed to circumnavigate this line.
Near the capital of Ecuador, Quito, there is a monument with a zero mark. From it, a line depicting the equator extends. In reality, it passes 240 meters north, through the Intiñan Museum building (the Road of the Sun).
33 islands intersect the equator. Of these, 17 belong to Indonesia (two of which are located in a lake on the island of Kalimantan), 9 are located at the mouth of the Amazon River, and 5 are in Lake Victoria in Africa.
21.3 kilometers – this is how much farther the equator is from the center of the Earth than its poles. Due to the Earth’s rotation, it is flattened at the poles by 1/298 of its diameter.
Objects lose 0.53 percent of their weight when moving from the pole to the equator due to centrifugal force and distance from the center of the Earth.
40,075 kilometers – this is the length of the equator. On average, a passenger car in Russia covers this distance in about two years.
14 countries are located on the equator. So far, no traveler has been able to traverse all these countries and thus complete a circumnavigation along the equator.
35,786 kilometers – this is the height above the equator of the geostationary orbit where communication satellites “hover.” A signal travels there and back at the speed of light in just a quarter of a second.
4,690 meters – the highest point on the equator, located on a glacier on the southern slope of the Cayambe volcano in Ecuador. It is the only glacier on the equator.
At the equator, the speed of Earth’s rotation is 465 meters per second. This exceeds the speed of sound in air (331 m/s).
465/331=1.40 times faster is the rotation speed of Earth at the equator compared to the speed of sound. When launched from the equator, a satellite immediately achieves supersonic speed. This saves 10% of fuel.
