NASA Space Station
Places · Spaceport
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Sputnik and Gagarin both left from here, and for nine years after the Shuttle retired it was the only way for anyone to reach the space station.
- Where
- Kazakhstan
- Coordinates
- 45.97°N 63.30°E
- Since
- 1957
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- roscosmos.ru
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 3: rural transition, which is Bortle 3–4 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 6.2–7.0. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 38 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 106 are comfortable in 10×50s and 106 in a 130mm reflector. You would have to get roughly 7 km north-east before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
The galactic centre tops out at 15° from this latitude — low enough that the busiest part of the Milky Way is always behind the most atmosphere, which is what separates this sky from a southern one. Of the 110 Messier objects, 14 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Sunflower Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and Cat's Eye Galaxy pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Whirlpool Galaxy, Little Dumbbell and Pinwheel Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 45.97°N 63.30°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
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Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Baikonur Cosmodrome?
Everything south of declination −44°. From 46.0°N that is a cap 46° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 15% of the whole celestial sphere. Nothing about the calendar or the aperture changes that — the cap is below the horizon at every hour of every night. Its mirror image, the same 15% around the north celestial pole, is circumpolar here and never goes down.
How many hours of true darkness does Baikonur Cosmodrome get?
From about 2 hours 49 minutes at the thin end of the year, near 21 June, up to 11 hours 43 minutes around 21 December. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. Unlike sites further from the equator, no part of the year here is written off entirely.
What orbits can be reached from Baikonur Cosmodrome?
Anything inclined at 46.0° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 46.0°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 46.0° — the shallowest the site can reach without spending propellant to turn the plane — and steeper orbits are simply a matter of launching on a different heading. That leaves the Space Station at 51.6° and the sun-synchronous band near 98° both within easy reach, since going steeper is only a matter of choosing a different heading. What the latitude charges for is the other direction: a geostationary orbit sits at 0° inclination, and all 46.0° of the difference has to be bought back with propellant that could have been payload.
How far is Baikonur Cosmodrome from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is Soyuz recovery area, 392 km away to the north-east. The nearest other spaceport is Plesetsk Cosmodrome, 2,360 km to the north-west. Distances are great-circle, so they are what a signal covers rather than what a road does.