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Mercator projection
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Diagram illustrating the simple cylindrical projection used in the Mercator map projection. On the left, a globe is shown with a cylinder wrapped around it, tangent at the equator, and a light source at the center projecting the map onto the cylinder. In the center, the Earth's features are projected onto the cylindrical surface. On the right, the resulting Mercator projection is displayed as a rectangular world map with latitude and longitude grid lines.
Smiling white woman pointing up at a vintage map, superimposed with the text Africa and the Mercator map.
Side-by-side comparison showing a globe of the Earth on the left with accurately proportioned continents, and a Mercator projection map on the right, where landmasses appear increasingly distorted and stretched near the poles, especially between 60 and 90 degrees latitude. The map highlights how the Mercator projection exaggerates the size of high-latitude regions. global topographic map of Venus Mercator's 1569 world map
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Diagram illustrating the simple cylindrical projection used in the Mercator map projection. On the left, a globe is shown with a cylinder wrapped around it, tangent at the equator, and a light source at the center projecting the map onto the cylinder. In the center, the Earth's features are projected onto the cylindrical surface. On the right, the resulting Mercator projection is displayed as a rectangular world map with latitude and longitude grid lines.
Mercator projection The Mercator projection is a transformation of a cylindrical projection used for navigation.

Mercator projection

cartography
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History

Mercator projection, type of map projection introduced in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator. It is often described as a cylindrical projection, but it must be derived mathematically. The meridians are equally spaced parallel vertical lines, and the parallels of latitude are parallel horizontal straight lines that are spaced farther and farther apart as their distance from the Equator increases. The Mercator projection is widely used for navigation charts, because any straight line on a Mercator projection...

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