Places · Ground station
New Norcia ground station
ESA's 35 m deep-space antenna, built for Mars Express and now tracking everything from JUICE to BepiColombo.
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 2 — rural, Bortle 2–3, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 6.7–7.5. The Milky Way is structured and obvious. Light domes sit low on the horizon over distant towns, and the rest of the sky is genuinely dark.
Against that sky 107 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 107 in a 130mm, with 44 reachable by eye alone. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
The Sun drops far enough below the horizon here for full astronomical darkness on every night of the year — which is not true of anywhere much further from the equator.
At its highest the galactic centre stands 88° up, which is the difference between a Milky Way with depth in it and a smear along the horizon. Of the 110 Messier objects, none are circumpolar and 4 never rise.
The sky here is kindest to Butterfly Cluster, Southern Pinwheel and Ptolemy's Cluster, each of which passes within a few degrees of overhead — 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 31.05°S 116.19°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 New Norcia ground station?
Everything north of declination +59°. From 31.0°S that is a cap 31° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 7.2% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 7.2% around the south celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does New Norcia ground station get?
Between 6 hours 33 minutes on the shortest night of the year, around 21 December, and 10 hours 59 minutes on the longest, around 21 June. The measure is astronomical darkness — the Sun a full eighteen degrees under — not simply the hours between sunset and sunrise. The sky here reaches it on every night of the year, which is not true much further from the equator.
When is the Milky Way best from New Norcia ground station?
Midwinter — around 17 June, when the centre of the galaxy is on the meridian at local midnight. South of the equator that date brings the longest nights of the year rather than the shortest, so the best part of the sky is highest exactly when there is most darkness to see it in. Nothing about instrumentation compensates for that; it is why the serious optical telescopes went south.
How far is New Norcia ground station from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is SKA-Low, 485 km away to the north. The nearest other ground station is Canberra Deep Space Complex, 3,070 km to the east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.