The Arctic Circle

At a small land mark on Dalton Highway, Alaska, this lady showed her pride of having reached the Arctic Circle. A large board showed the Arctic Circle (in yellow dotted line), the land and ocean at the Polar region. The “star” indicated the location of the board.

There the lady was issued a certificate (I don’t know if she had to pay for it) by Northern Alaska Tour Company to commemorate that she had crossed the Arctic Circle.

Let us read a brief note of this imaginary line on Earth:

The Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It is the parallel of latitude that runs 66° 33’ 44” (or 66.5622°) north of the Equator. The region north of this circle is known as the Arctic, and the zone just to the south is called the Northern Temperate Zone. The equivalent polar circle in the Southern Hemisphere is called the Antarctic Circle.

The Arctic Circle passes through the Arctic Ocean, the Scandinavian Peninsula, North Asia, Northern America and Greenland. The land on the Arctic Circle is divided among eight countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the United States (i.e. Alaska), Canada, Denmark (i.e. Greenland), and Iceland (where it passes through the small offshore island of Grímsey).

Besides the Arctic Circle, can you name the other 4 major circles of latitude?