S2 cell details
Everything about an cell: its center, its four corners, the face and level, its exact area against the average for that level, and its parent and children.
Cell 8834f3dec is at level 15 on face 4, covering 66,352.65 m².
| Latitude | Longitude |
|---|---|
| 40.4479334 deg | -79.9836108 deg |
| 40.4454117 deg | -79.9836108 deg |
| 40.4451678 deg | -79.9808143 deg |
| 40.4476895 deg | -79.9808143 deg |
| Cell |
|---|
| 8834f3de9 |
| 8834f3deb |
| 8834f3ded |
| 8834f3def |
- Cell id
- Level
- Face
- Center latitude
- Center longitude
- Cell area
Provenance
- Computed by
- indexing.s2.cell-info 1.0.0, core 0.1.0
- Model
- The cell id's face, Hilbert position, and level bits, with the corners taken back through the quadratic projection
- Accuracy
- Matches s2sphere on 400 cases: identical hierarchy, and centers and corners within 10 nanometers. The exact area agrees to rounding down to level 20 and to about 2e-7 relative at level 30, where a cell is a centimeter across.
- Notes
- None
- Cites
- Google, S2 Geometry
Something look off?
How we got thisFormula, worked example, sources, and proof
Model: The cell id's face, Hilbert position, and level bits, with the corners taken back through the quadratic projection
Accuracy: Matches s2sphere on 400 cases: identical hierarchy, and centers and corners within 10 nanometers. The exact area agrees to rounding down to level 20 and to about 2e-7 relative at level 30, where a cell is a centimeter across.
When to use this: Use this when an S2 token or id arrives and you need to know what it covers: the corners to draw it, the center to plot it, the area to weight it, and the parent and children to move between levels. The average area beside the exact one shows how far this particular cell sits from the level's nominal size.
Limitations: The corners are the cell's own, which are not a rectangle in latitude and longitude: S2 cells are quadrilaterals on the sphere, and drawing them as boxes overstates their extent near the face edges. Levels deeper than about 23 are finer than most positions are known to.
Worked example: The level 15 cell over Pittsburgh. Source: The cell from the token scenario, with its geometry checked against s2sphere. It is golden test vector v001, and every build checks the tool still gives its answer within its tolerance.
You enter
- S2 cell
- 8834f3dec
You get
- S2 cell
- 8834f3dec
- Cell id
- 9814737625976668160
- Level
- 15
- Face
- 4
- Center latitude
- 40.4465506°
- Center longitude
- -79.9822126°
- Cell area
- 66,352.65 m²
- Average for the level
- 79,172.64 m²
- Parent
- 8834f3df
Review: Not yet independently reviewed by a GIS professional.
Last verified: 2026-09-22, when a maintainer last confirmed this tool's sources at the issuer. See the sources ledger.
Status: version 1.0.0, core 0.1.0. See this tool in the verification report.
Checked against: 22 golden test vectors (download the test vectors, each with its source and tolerance). See how results are checked and every source.
Sources
- S2 Geometry, Google, S2 Geometry library. Cell ids, the quadratic projection, the Hilbert curve, tokens, and cell hierarchy.
Terms
- S2: S2 Geometry
- A way of indexing the sphere: the Earth is projected onto a cube, each face is traced by a Hilbert curve, and a cell is a position along that curve at a level from 0 to 30. Source: S2 Geometry
S2 — S2 Geometry
A way of indexing the sphere: the Earth is projected onto a cube, each face is traced by a Hilbert curve, and a cell is a position along that curve at a level from 0 to 30.
Source: S2 Geometry