The latitude of a point on a sphere is the elevation of the point from the plane of the equator. The latitude is related to the colatitude (the polar angle in spherical coordinates) by . More generally, the latitude of a point on an ellipsoid is the angle between a line perpendicular to the surface of the ellipsoid at the given point and the plane of the equator (Snyder 1987).

The equator therefore has latitude , and the north and south poles have latitude , respectively. Latitude is also called geographic latitude or geodetic latitude in order to distinguish it from several subtly different varieties of auxiliary latitudes.

The shortest distance between any two points on a sphere is the so-called great circle distance, which can be directly computed from the latitudes and longitudes of the two points.

Snyder, J. P. Map Projections--A Working Manual. U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1395. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, p. 13, 1987.

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Weisstein, Eric W. "Latitude." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Latitude.html