Glossary term: Nadir
Description: The nadir is defined as the point directly below the observer. It is relative to the position of the observer as the nadir for a person in London would be different from that of a person in Beijing or Cape Town. Measured in angles it is 90 degrees from the horizon. The opposite of the nadir is called the zenith.
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Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".
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Related Diagrams
Horizontal Coordinate System
Caption: This image shows the horizontal coordinate system of an observer on Earth. On the right we see the coordinate system in the local context of the observer. The observer appears here as a point surrounded by the celestial sphere. The ground appears as a plane, while the Earth is round, we can approximate the ground in the area around the observer as a plane. The line where this plane intersects with the celestial sphere is the horizon. The point directly above the observer is the zenith, the point directly below the observer is the nadir which is hidden by the ground.
Two coordinates define this coordinate system, altitude and azimuth, hence the reason this sometimes called an alt-az coordinate system. The altitude is zero at the horizon, maximum (90°) at the zenith and minimum (-90°) at the nadir. Azimuth is the angle around the horizon. Most commonly this is defined to be zero in the direction of north. Any point on the celestial sphere can be defined by these two coordinates. However what objects appear on these position will depend on the time and the location of the observer.
On the left-hand part of the diagram, we can see that when we put the observer and their local horizontal coordinate system in a global context, that the parts of the sky the observer can see depend on their position on the Earth and on the rotation of the Earth. The zenith points perpendicular to the Earth's surface so the position on the sky the zenith and nadir correspond to is dependent on the observer's latitude. The horizon also depends on the observer's position on the Earth.
Credit: Maria Cristina Fortuna/IAU OAE
License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
