Qibla direction in Austin

How to face the Qibla in Austin

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 43.5° towards east: the result is the bearing of 43.5°. 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 Austin.

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 Austin to Mecca points to 94.1° (east), a full 50.6° away from the true Qibla of 43.5° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,088 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Austin 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 30.2672° N, 97.7431° 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 Austin to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 12,694 km from Austin as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,419 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 15 h 26 min, although most pilgrims from Austin connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Austin 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 Austin rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Austin

From Austin the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 43.5°, 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 Austin (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 Austin points straight to Mecca.

Austin compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 2,118 km away, the Qibla in Austin is turned 13.1° further anticlockwise (43.5° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 2,061 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Round Rock (28 km), prays towards 43.5°, the same bearing to the tenth of a degree.

Across the 244 cities in the United States on this site, the Qibla ranges from 17.2° in Hillsboro to 350.9° in Anchorage, a spread of 333.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for United States.

Qibla in cities near Austin

• Round Rock43.5° · 28 km
• Killeen43.3° · 95 km
• San Antonio43.2° · 118 km
• College Station44.5° · 141 km
• Waco43.6° · 154 km
• Cypress45.2° · 200 km