Places · Spaceport
Woomera Range Complex
The largest land testing range in the world, where Australia launched its own satellite in 1967 and where Hayabusa's sample capsule came down in 2010.
- Where
- South Australia
- Coordinates
- 30.95°S 136.53°E
- Since
- 1967
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- defence.gov.au
The sky from here
This is a zone 1 sky — pristine on the nine-grade scale, Bortle 1–2, reaching roughly magnitude 7.2–8.0 unaided. 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.
That grade puts 107 of the catalogue within easy reach of 10×50 binoculars and 107 within a 130mm — 58 of them need no instrument at all. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
There is no season here in which the sky fails to get properly dark — the Sun clears eighteen degrees below the horizon on all 365 nights.
The centre of the galaxy climbs to 88° 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 4 never rise.
Of everything in the catalogue, Southern Pinwheel, Butterfly Cluster and Ptolemy's Cluster are the best served here, climbing to within a few degrees of straight up — 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 30.95°S 136.53°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 Woomera Range Complex?
Everything north of declination +59°. From 31.0°S that is a cap 31° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 7.1% 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 7.1% around the south celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Woomera Range Complex get?
10 hours 59 minutes on the best night, around 21 June, falling to 6 hours 34 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.
What orbits can be reached from Woomera Range Complex?
Anything inclined at 31.0° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 31.0°S arrives in an orbit inclined at 31.0° — 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. The Space Station's 51.6°, and any polar or sun-synchronous orbit, are all available from here. What the latitude charges for is the other direction: a geostationary orbit sits at 0° inclination, and all 31.0° of the difference has to be bought back with propellant that could have been payload.
How far is Woomera Range Complex from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is Murriyang — the Parkes dish, 1,130 km away to the east. The nearest other spaceport is Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, 3,840 km to the south-east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.