Astrophotography in Jordan: Wadi Rum and the Dana Reserve

Where to see the Milky Way in Jordan

The best place to see the stars in Jordan is Wadi Rum, four hours south of Amman, with the Dana Biosphere Reserve as a quieter second. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons; the Milky Way core is high over the cliffs from May to September.

Wadi Rum is one of the best-known night skies in the Middle East, and it earns it. The desert in Jordan’s far south is sandstone mountains standing out of red sand, with Bedouin camps and no town for a long way, and the sky over it is dark in every direction but the north, where Aqaba glows faintly.

Wadi Rum Protected Area

The protected area is a UNESCO World Heritage site, entered through the village of Rum and explored by four-wheel drive with a local guide. Camps are spread through the valleys, some of them with transparent domes built for looking at the sky. The best photographs come from walking out of camp with a tripod: a rock arch or a cliff against the Milky Way needs only the starlight and a little moon to light the foreground.

Suits: nightscapes with cliffs and arches, the Milky Way core in summer, and star trails.

Dana Biosphere Reserve

Dana is Jordan’s largest nature reserve, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley between Petra and the Dead Sea. The guesthouse and the camps sit on a canyon edge at over a thousand metres, with the land falling away to the west. It is quieter than Wadi Rum and the horizon to the west is empty.

Suits: deep-sky work from altitude, and canyon foregrounds.

Petra at night

Petra itself is lit for the candle-lit night walks, so it is not a dark sky site, but the surrounding hills are, and the road south to Wadi Rum passes through empty country.

Timing a night

Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons, with clear nights that are neither hot nor freezing. Summer nights in Wadi Rum are warm but workable, and the core is high. Winter nights are cold, sometimes below freezing, and occasionally cloudy.

What to shoot from Jordan

From 29 to 33 degrees north the galactic core stands high in summer, and Scorpius clears the southern cliffs completely. In winter Orion and the Pleiades are up all night, and the Andromeda Galaxy is high in the autumn.

Processing what you bring home

Akastroid stacks and finishes your frames on your own computer, with nothing uploaded, so a Wadi Rum night can be processed in camp the next morning. The free download processes five sessions and allows two exports, enough for one night all the way through. If you buy a licence later, PayPal works for paying from Jordan, with a PayPal account or a debit or credit card.

Across the Middle East

The same guide for the rest of the region: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Israel.