Qibla Direction in Sydney, New South Wales

How to face the Qibla in Sydney

1. With your phone: tap Open the live Qibla compass, allow location (and, on iPhone, motion access), then turn slowly until the Kaaba on the dial reaches the mark at the top.
2. With a regular compass: hold it flat, turn it until the needle sits on N, then face 264.7° on the dial. That is the magnetic bearing; reading 277.5° off a magnetic compass would leave you about 12.8° off.
3. With the map: open the live compass, switch to Map and follow the gold line from your position to the Kaaba. It does not use the compass at all.

If a phone compass looks wrong, move the phone in a figure-eight a few times, away from laptops, speakers, car dashboards and magnetic cases, and hold it flat while you turn.

Why the Qibla from Sydney points west

Sydney is in the Southern Hemisphere at 33.9° S, and Makkah is in the Northern Hemisphere at 21.4° N, so the path to the Kaaba crosses the equator on its way. Measured clockwise from true north, the Qibla from Sydney is 277.5°, west. On a flat Mercator map a straight line points 297°, west-northwest; the great circle, the shortest route over the globe, is the one the bearing follows, and from Sydney the great-circle bearing is about 20° to the left of the flat-map line. The Kaaba is 13,236 km (8,225 miles) away. Across Australia and New Zealand the Qibla runs from 256.4° in Wellington to 295.4° in Perth.

Nearby cities

• Canberra, Australia277.8° W · 247 km away
• Gold Coast, Australia279.8° W · 683 km away
• Melbourne, Australia278.8° W · 713 km away
• Brisbane, Australia280.3° W · 732 km away
• Adelaide, Australia283.3° WNW · 1,162 km away

See every city in Australia and New Zealand, or use the Qibla Finder for your exact spot.

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