Places · Dark sky
NamibRand Nature Reserve
Africa's first certified reserve, and among the darkest measured places on Earth — the sky glow is close to the natural airglow floor, which is as dark as a sky physically gets.
- Where
- Namib Desert, Namibia
- Coordinates
- 25.00°S 16.00°E
- Since
- 2012
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- darksky.org
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 1: pristine, which is Bortle 1–2 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 7.2–8.0. The Milky Way casts a shadow. Airglow is visible, the zodiacal light reaches across the sky, and the darkest places on Earth look like this.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 58 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 107 are comfortable in 10×50s and 107 in a 130mm reflector. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
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 centre of the galaxy climbs to 86° at its best — high enough that the summer Milky Way is genuinely three-dimensional rather than a band low in the south. Of the 110 Messier objects, none are circumpolar and 2 never rise.
Lagoon Nebula, Trifid Nebula and Southern Pinwheel 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.
Against that, Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 25.00°S 16.00°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at NamibRand Nature Reserve?
Everything north of declination +65°. From 25.0°S that is a cap 25° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 4.7% of the whole celestial sphere. That part of the sky is not merely a winter object or a difficult one; it is geometrically unavailable from this latitude. The equivalent cap around the south celestial pole is the compensation, and it never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does NamibRand Nature Reserve get?
10 hours 42 minutes on the best night, around 21 June, falling to 7 hours 20 minutes around 21 December. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer. Every night of the year gets there eventually, which is the quiet advantage of not being any further from the equator than this.
When is the Milky Way best from NamibRand Nature Reserve?
Around 17 June, when the galactic centre crosses the meridian at local midnight — and because this is a southern site, that is also midwinter, with the longest and darkest nights of the year underneath it. The brightest part of the Milky Way reaches its highest point on the best nights available, rather than during a summer that will not go dark. That coincidence is most of the reason the world's large optical observatories are in the southern hemisphere.
How far is NamibRand Nature Reserve from the other sites on this map?
The nearest is H.E.S.S., about 199 km to the north. The nearest other dark sky is Pic du Midi Dark Sky Reserve, 7,730 km to the north. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.