Qibla direction in Ciudad Acuña

How to face the Qibla in Ciudad Acuña

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 41.2° towards east: the result is the bearing of 41.2°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “north” would be off by more than 40°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Ciudad Acuña.

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

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from Ciudad Acuña to Mecca points to 93.6° (east), a full 52.3° away from the true Qibla of 41.2° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,174 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Ciudad Acuña first heads north-east, and that is the direction to face.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 29.3232° N, 100.9522° 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 Ciudad Acuña to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 12,981 km from Ciudad Acuña as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,699 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 15 h 46 min, although most pilgrims from Ciudad Acuña connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Ciudad Acuña run 9 hours behind Mecca in winter and 8 hours behind Mecca in summer, because of daylight saving time. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Ciudad Acuña rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Ciudad Acuña

From Ciudad Acuña the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 41.2°, so you cannot simply face the sun. The opposite method works instead, as the right-hand column of the table shows.

On 365 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 15:30.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Ciudad Acuña (04:18 and 04:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 15:29 and 28 November 2027 at 15:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Ciudad Acuña points straight to Mecca.

Ciudad Acuña compared with other cities

Compared with Mexico City, 1,116 km away, the Qibla in Ciudad Acuña is turned 5.4° further anticlockwise (41.2° against 46.6°), and Mecca is 666 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Piedras Negras (81 km), prays towards 41.8°, a difference of 0.6°.

Across the 99 cities in Mexico on this site, the Qibla ranges from 25.5° in Rosarito to 54.2° in Chetumal, a spread of 28.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Mexico.

Qibla in cities near Ciudad Acuña

• Piedras Negras41.8° · 81 km
• Nuevo Laredo43.0° · 249 km
• Monclova41.7° · 273 km
• Apodaca43.1° · 401 km
• Monterrey43.0° · 409 km
• Ciudad Benito Juárez43.2° · 418 km