Geodjango distance between two points appears incorrect

Question

I want to show you something. I am using django+postgis and I am experiencing wrong distance values between two points.

This is my model:

class Location(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    latitude = models.FloatField(blank=True, null=True, verbose_name='Latitude')
    longitude = models.FloatField(blank=True, null=True, verbose_name='Longitude')
    location = models.PointField(blank = True, null=True)

    objects = models.GeoManager()

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.location = Point(self.latitude, self.longitude)
        super(Location, self).save(*args, **kwargs)

This is the data:

bogota = Location(name='bogota', latitude='4.61779093242', longitude='-74.0893133545')
bogota.save()
barranquilla = Location(name='barranquilla', latitude='10.9731710819', longitude='-74.8020513916')
barranquilla.save()

This is the query:

ls = Location.objects.distance(bog.location).order_by('distance')
for l in ls: l.name; l.distance.km

This is the output:

Out[29]: u'BOGOTA'
Out[29]: 0.0
Out[29]: u'BARRANQUILLA'
Out[29]: 205.27667079004999

But Barranquilla city is to ~700km from Bogota city, see here: "http://www.travelmath.com/flight-distance/from/Bogota,+Colombia/to/Barranquilla,+Colombia"

So, what is wrong? the SRID are the default values.

Answer 1

The order of latitude and longitude has been reversed in the call

self.location = Point(self.latitude, self.longitude)

That is because Points expect the x-coordinate (longitude) to be the first argument.

Indeed, the distance between points at latitude -74 degrees and longitudes at 4.6 and 11.0 degrees is approximately 206 kilometers.