Oceania on five projections
Oceania covers 8,520,762 km² of ground. Mercator draws it 1.25 times over. Area and shape readings on all five projections, each one measured.
Larger than Europe; the map disagrees
Oceania covers 8,520,762 km² against Europe's 5,939,872 - 43 percent more. But Oceania's anchor is at 25.3° S, where Mercator inflates it just 1.25 times, and Europe's is at 51.7° N, where it is inflated 3.18. The map reverses them.
Not personal, but not neutral either
Mercator's inflation depends only on the absolute value of latitude, so it is perfectly symmetric north and south. The Earth's land is not. Almost all high-latitude land is in the northern hemisphere, so a symmetric distortion produces a systematically northern map.
This object
- True area
- 8,520,762 km²
- Anchor latitude
- 25.3° S
- Angular radius
- 41.9°
- Draggable latitude range
- -73.6° … 65.8°
On five projections
Each number is measured against its own projection's equator, not against another projection. These five rows do not share an axis - they are five answers to the same question: what did this map give up to lay this place flat?
| Projection | Area distortion | Shape distortion |
|---|---|---|
| Equirectangular | 1.12 | 1.11 |
| Mercator | 1.25 | 1.00 constant |
| Natural Earth | 1.09 | 1.36 |
| Equal Earth | 1.00 constant | 1.59 |
| Gall-Peters | 1.00 constant | 1.63 |
Mercator inflates it most, 1.25 times over. Gall-Peters stretches it most: its long axis is 1.63 times its short one.
The same size, drawn otherwise
Nothing in the catalogue is close to Oceania's area at a far enough latitude to be worth the comparison.
Bigger than the map admits
Mercator draws nothing larger than Oceania smaller than it.
On an equal-area projection this section is empty, for every object there is. An equal-area map draws in proportion to true area, so it cannot draw a larger thing smaller. That is a definition, not a coincidence.
Open it in the tool
Drag Oceania across the latitude bands and the readout follows.