What Do All Countries Look Like at Equator Size?

At equator size, every country on the map is drawn at its true size, as if it sat on the equator, where the Mercator projection has almost no distortion. Countries near the poles, such as Russia, Canada and Greenland, shrink a lot, while countries near the equator hardly change.

Every country loaded at equator size. Compare it with a normal Mercator map.

What "equator size" means

On a Mercator map, the distance between two points is stretched by a factor that grows as you move away from the equator. Near the equator the factor is about 1. At 60° latitude it is 2 in each direction, so areas look 4 times bigger. At 70° it is about 2.9, so areas look more than 8 times larger.

Equator size removes this stretch. TrueSize moves each country to the equator, keeps its real area there, and then puts it back at its home location. Every country still sits in its normal place, but with the size and shape it would have on the equator. Because all countries share the same scale, you can compare them fairly without moving anything.

The numbers

Country	Latitude range (rough)	Looks bigger on Mercator by (area, rough)
Brazil	5°N to 34°S	1× to 1.5×
India	8°N to 35°N	1× to 1.5×
United States (contiguous)	25°N to 49°N	1.2× to 2.3×
Russia	41°N to 78°N	1.8× to 23×
Greenland	60°N to 83°N	4× to 80×

These are approximate geometric values for the local stretch of area at those latitudes. They show why the biggest changes appear at the top of the map.

What you see

• Russia and Canada remain very large, but they no longer dominate the map.
• Greenland becomes a small shape next to Africa and South America.
• Equatorial countries such as Indonesia, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo look similar to normal.

Try it yourself

1. Open Advanced → Load.
2. Choose Load All Countries (Equator Size). It is available only for the modern map, not for historical years.
3. Compare the result with Load All Countries (True Size) from the same dialog, which loads every country with accurate geographic size at its home location, as a comparison.

More comparisons

• Greenland vs Africa
• How big is Africa?
• Cities at the same latitude
• Tutorial: selecting countries and Load All

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