Desert stargazing
Tonight's sky over the UAE, as if you were lying on your back in the dunes with your head to the north. Many star names we use today are Arabic. Tap a star to see its name and what it means.
Brightest things up now
Star names that came from Arabic
Arab astronomers and navigators named hundreds of stars, and many of those names went into European star atlases almost unchanged. You still see them in astronomy apps today.
- الدبران · Aldebaran"The follower": it follows the Pleiades across the sky.
- النسر الطائر · Altair"The flying eagle". Vega is its partner, النسر الواقع, "the swooping eagle".
- ذنب الدجاجة · Deneb"The hen's tail", at the end of the constellation we call Cygnus.
- رجل الجبار · Rigel"The giant's foot", the bright blue star at the bottom of Orion.
- فم الحوت · Fomalhaut"The mouth of the fish", alone and bright in the autumn sky.
- رأس الغول · Algol"The demon's head". It really does dim, every 2.9 days.
Sailing by the stars, like Ibn Majid
Ahmad ibn Majid was born around 1432 in Julfar, close to today's Ras Al Khaimah. In 1490 he wrote Kitab al-Fawa'id, a guide to the sea that covers star positions and the lunar mansions, for sailors crossing to India and East Africa.
The Pole Star, which Arabs called الجدي, sits almost still above the north. Its height above the horizon is close to your latitude. Tap it on the map: from Abu Dhabi it is about 24° up, from Ras Al Khaimah a little higher.
Navigators measured star heights in "fingers" (إصبع) and with the kamal, a small wooden card on a knotted cord. Each knot marked the height of the Pole Star at a known port.
Suhail (Canopus) first appears before dawn, low in the south-east, around 24 August. It is the old sign that the worst heat is ending. The change is slow: day and night become almost equal about 45 days later. The dawn rising of الثريا (the Pleiades) in June marked the start of the hottest season.
Find a darker sky
More than 97% of people in the UAE can't see the Milky Way from home. Drive well away from towns and highways, and the sky changes completely.
A bright Moon washes out faint stars just like city lights do. The nights around the new moon are the best. Move the time slider to see when the Moon is up.
Your eyes keep getting more sensitive for a while after you turn off the lights. Put your phone away, or turn the screen right down, and give them time.
Go with others and tell someone where you are going. Take water and a charged phone, and don't drive into the dunes alone at night. In an emergency call 999 (police) or 998 (ambulance).
Sources: Star counts: Globe at Night's conversion from naked-eye limiting magnitude to the number of stars you can see (about 2,500 at magnitude 6, about 7,000 at magnitude 7, about 250 at magnitude 4); the Bortle dark-sky scale (John Bortle, Sky & Telescope, 2001), where an inner-city sky shows stars down to magnitude 4 or less. Light pollution in the UAE: Falchi and others, "The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness", Science Advances (2016), as reported by Nature Middle East. Suhail: Ibrahim Al Jarwan, Emirates Astronomy Society, in Gulf News (2026). Ibn Majid: Saudi Aramco World, "The Navigator Ahmad ibn Majid" (2005), and Khaleej Times. Sky positions: Paul Schlyter's low-precision method for the Sun, Moon and planets, and J2000 star positions (good to a fraction of a degree, fine for the eye). "Desert sky" adds faint stars and the Milky Way as an illustration; the named stars are in their real places. Your location is used only on your device and is not sent or saved.