Places · Spaceport
Vostochny Cosmodrome
Built to give Russia a launch site on its own territory rather than leasing Baikonur from Kazakhstan.
- Where
- Amur Oblast, Russia
- Coordinates
- 51.88°N 128.33°E
- Since
- 2016
- 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 before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
For 63 nights of the year — 21 May to 22 July — the sky here never reaches astronomical darkness, because the Sun stays within eighteen degrees of the horizon all night. Distance from the nearest town makes no difference to that.
The galactic centre tops out at 9° 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, 22 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Spindle Galaxy, Whirlpool Galaxy and Sunflower 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.
Little Dumbbell, Pinwheel Galaxy and Owl Nebula 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 51.88°N 128.33°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 Vostochny Cosmodrome?
Everything south of declination −38°. From 51.9°N that is a cap 52° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 19% 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 north celestial pole is the compensation, and it never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Vostochny Cosmodrome get?
Between nothing at all and 12 hours 3 minutes, depending entirely on the date. The longest night falls around 21 December; around 21 May there is no astronomical darkness at any hour, however far you get from the nearest town. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer.
What orbits can be reached from Vostochny Cosmodrome?
Anything inclined at 51.9° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 51.9°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 51.9° — 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 is already steeper than the Space Station's own 51.6°, so even reaching the Station from here means a dogleg rather than the straightforward case it is closer to the equator. The bill arrives on the way down to the equator. Geostationary orbit is at 0°, so a satellite launched from here carries 51.9° of unwanted inclination that has to be removed in orbit, and the fuel to remove it is mass that is not the spacecraft.
How far is Vostochny Cosmodrome from the other sites on this map?
The nearest is Sikhote-Alin fall, about 785 km to the south-east. The nearest other spaceport is Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, 1,940 km to the south-west. These are straight-line distances over the surface, not driving distances, and in this part of the world the two can differ considerably.