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What is longitude?
Find out what longitude is and what makes it so hard to measure
Royal Museums Greenwich
Royal Museums Greenwich is home to Royal Observatory Greenwich, the iconic historic sailing ship Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen’s House
National Maritime Museum
Discover epic stories of exploration and endeavour that have shaped our world today
Top things to do at the National Maritime Museum
Epic tales of exploration, maritime treasures and family-friendly galleries
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Longitude found: Nevil Maskelyne and the lunar method
Find out how the celebrated Astronomer Royal helped to solve the longitude problem
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Meridian astronomy
Meridian astronomy is the meticulous surveying of the stars so that positions and movements of stars can be known accurately.
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Projectors, pranks and perpetual motion
From the satirical to the serious, the quest for longitude provoked a wealth of responses, some more worthy of attention than others.
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When is Easter?
Easter falls on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April, but working out which Sunday exactly requires an astronomical calculation
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Which years are leap years and can you have leap seconds?
Because the Earth takes a little over 365 days to orbit the Sun, we need to make adjustments to keep the seasons from drifting: leap years and even leap seconds