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Tropic of Cancer Map

The northernmost latitude where the sun can be directly overhead, once a year, at the June solstice.

How to use it

  1. Check today's latitude in the facts; it changes by about 48 feet a year.
  2. Follow the red line on the map; the shaded countries are the ones it crosses, and each white marker explains where.
  3. Type a place, or use your location, and press Find nearest point to see how far you are from the tropic and which way it lies.
  4. Read the table for the states, provinces and monuments along the line.

How it works

The tropic is not a fixed number: it sits at the Earth's axial tilt, and the tilt is shrinking. The page computes today's mean obliquity as 23.439291 - 0.0130042 T degrees, where T is Julian centuries since 1 January 2000, and draws the parallel at that latitude. The nutation of the axis adds a wobble of up to 9 arcseconds (about 900 feet) that the mean value leaves out.

The June solstice instant comes from the Meeus mean-season formula with its periodic terms, accurate to a few minutes. The country list was checked one by one; Western Sahara is counted as a territory, and the United States is listed as waters only because the line passes between two uninhabited islets in the Northwestern Hawaiian chain. Country outlines are Natural Earth data served from this site; place search and reverse lookups use OpenStreetMap services only after you act.

Questions

Does the Tropic of Cancer pass through the United States?
Not through any land. The US mainland ends at Key West, 75 miles (120 km) north of the line. The main Hawaiian islands are all south of it: Kauai reaches 22.2° N. The line does run through US waters between Nihoa and Mokumanamana (Necker), two uninhabited islets in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, so the US appears in the table as waters only.
Which countries does the Tropic of Cancer pass through?
Sixteen countries, from west to east: Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger (a short clip), Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Taiwan, Mexico and the Bahamas. It also crosses Western Sahara, a disputed territory administered by Morocco, which makes 17 if you count it.
What is the exact latitude of the Tropic of Cancer?
About 23° 26′ 10″ N in 2026, and it is moving south by roughly 48 feet (14.5 m) a year as the Earth's tilt slowly decreases. The page shows the value computed for today. Textbooks round it to 23.5° N.
Why is it called the Tropic of Cancer?
When the name was given, over 2,000 years ago, the sun stood in the constellation Cancer at the June solstice. Because of precession it is now in Taurus at that moment, but the name stayed.

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