The equator is the circle around the Earth exactly halfway between the poles, where the planet is widest and where a day is almost exactly 12 hours long all year round. Going eastward from the Prime Meridian, it crosses land in three regions.
The 13 countries
- São Tomé and Príncipe — the equator passes through its territorial waters, just south of Príncipe island.
- Gabon
- Republic of the Congo
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Uganda
- Kenya
- Somalia
- Maldives — through the atolls' waters, between two of the atolls.
- Indonesia — through Sumatra, Borneo (Kalimantan) and Sulawesi.
- Ecuador
- Colombia
- Brazil
- Kiribati — the equator passes through the ocean near several of its islands in the central Pacific.
Facts that come up
- Ecuador takes its name directly from the Spanish for "equator". The line runs about 25 km north of the capital, Quito, where the Mitad del Mundo ("Middle of the World") monument marks it — though modern GPS shows the true line is a couple of hundred metres away from the monument.
- There is no country on the equator in the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa — the line crosses thousands of kilometres of open water there.
- Countries on the equator have almost no seasons in the temperate sense. Day length barely changes through the year, and instead of summer and winter there are wet and dry seasons.
- The equator crosses the summit region of Mount Kilimanjaro's neighbour, Mount Kenya, so there is permanent ice almost exactly on the equator.
- A person standing on the equator weighs very slightly less than at the poles, because the Earth's rotation and its equatorial bulge both reduce the effect of gravity there.
Several equator countries — Gabon, Uganda, Ecuador, Kiribati — are exactly the ones people misplace by continent.
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