Qibla direction in Salta

How to face the Qibla in Salta

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 14.3° towards north: the result is the bearing of 75.7°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at east would leave you about 14° off.

Scholars agree that someone who can see the Kaaba must face it exactly, while someone far away faces its direction (jihat al-Ka‘bah) as precisely as reasonably possible. If a mosque is nearby, its mihrab and prayer lines are the easiest reference, since they were set when the building was laid out. At home, mark the direction once with tape or a small arrow so the whole family prays the same way.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

A straight line drawn on a flat (Mercator) map from Salta to Mecca points to 65.7° (north-east), 10.0° away from the correct 75.7°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 23 km longer than the true shortest route. The Qibla follows the great circle, the shortest path on the curved Earth, which is why the bearing differs.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 24.8065° S, 65.4200° W to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). It is the method used by mosque architects and by every serious Qibla calculator, and it gives one exact answer for each point on Earth.

Distance from Salta to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 12,460 km from Salta as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,546 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 15 h 10 min, although most pilgrims from Salta connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Salta run 6 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Salta rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Salta

On 238 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Salta while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in January (31 days); for example, on 1 January 2027 it happens at 12:57 local time.

On 99 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in January (31 days), for instance on 1 January 2027 at 18:04.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Salta (06:18 and 06:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 18:29 and 28 November 2027 at 18:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Salta points straight to Mecca.

Salta compared with other cities

Compared with Buenos Aires, 1,284 km away, the Qibla in Salta is turned 0.6° further anticlockwise (75.7° against 76.3°), and Mecca is 398 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, San Salvador de Jujuy (69 km), prays towards 75.4°, a difference of 0.3°.

Across the 34 cities in Argentina on this site, the Qibla ranges from 73.1° in Posadas to 86.4° in Comodoro Rivadavia, a spread of 13.3°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Argentina.

Qibla in cities near Salta

• San Salvador de Jujuy75.4° · 69 km
• San Miguel de Tucumán76.4° · 224 km
• Santiago del Estero76.5° · 352 km
• Catamarca77.3° · 409 km
• La Rioja78.2° · 532 km
• Resistencia74.3° · 707 km