Astrophotography in Kuwait: Dark Skies beyond the City Lights

Where to see the Milky Way in Kuwait

The darkest skies in Kuwait are in the western desert on the road to Salmi and in the far north around Al Abdali, both about an hour and a half from Kuwait City. Go in the winter camping season for comfort, or on a May or June night for the Milky Way core.

Kuwait is small, flat and brightly lit. Kuwait City, the oil fields and the coast road put a glow over most of the country, and from Salmiya or Hawalli the Milky Way is out of the question. The desert is close, though, and the darkest sky in the country is under an hour and a half from the city.

There is no certified dark sky place in Kuwait yet. What there is instead is a camping tradition: every winter, from November to March, families set up camps in the desert, and the far ends of those camping areas are where photographers go.

The western desert around Salmi

The road west towards Salmi and the Saudi border leaves the glow of the city behind after Jahra. The land is open gravel desert with nothing to block the horizon, which suits wide Milky Way panoramas and star trails. The glow of Kuwait City stays low in the east, and the oil fields of Burgan sit to the south-east, so face west or south for the darkest part of the sky.

Suits: wide-field nightscapes, star trails and a tracker on a tripod.

Al Abdali in the north

Al Abdali, near the Iraqi border, is farm country at the northern tip of Kuwait. It is further from the city glow than most of the desert, and the farms give a foreground of palms and water tanks that a plain desert does not. Check the border rules before you go and keep well inside them.

Suits: nightscapes with a foreground, and long sessions where you can run power from a car.

Timing a night

The winter camping season is the comfortable one, with clear nights and temperatures that an uncooled camera likes. The galactic core is a summer object, though, so a Milky Way core shot means a night in May or June, when the desert stays warm long after dark and dust is more common. Spring brings the worst dust storms; check the dust forecast as well as the cloud.

What to shoot from Kuwait

From 29 degrees north the whole northern sky is available, and in summer the core of the Milky Way stands well up in the south. In winter, Orion, the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy are high for most of the night, and a smart telescope on a camp table can run through a list of them before the fire dies down.

Processing what you bring home

Akastroid stacks and finishes your frames on your own computer, with nothing uploaded, so a night in the desert can be processed on the laptop you brought along. Its gradient removal matters here: the glow of the city adds a slope to one side of almost every frame shot in Kuwait. The free download processes five sessions and allows two exports, enough to take one night all the way through. If you buy a licence later, PayPal works for paying from Kuwait, 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, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Israel.