About 100 kilometers southeast of Abu Dhabi, past a heavily lit prison and a stretch of roadway called Razeen Road, an automatic gate opens onto an unpaved track that leads deeper into Al Quaa Desert—one of the last places in the United Arab Emirates where the night sky remains unmarred by city light.
On a weekend in late May, the Dubai Astronomy Group brought dozens of families to this rare pocket of darkness to witness something most residents of the UAE can no longer see from home: the Milky Way, stretching across the sky in all its splendor. The group has made it their mission to help people reconnect with the stars that once guided Bedouin traders across the Empty Quarter, the vast interior desert that defined life in the Arabian Peninsula for centuries. Today, that heritage is nearly invisible beneath the luminous fog that development has cast over the nation.
The numbers tell a stark story. A 2016 scientific study found that 99% of the Emirates population cannot see the Milky Way from their homes because of artificial light pollution. The UAE ranks among the world's most light-polluted countries, a consequence of its spectacular transformation into a major global hub for commerce and tourism. Street lights on roadways, the LED light show at Dubai's Burj Khalifa—the world's tallest building—and the proliferation of LED billboards across the emirate have created a perpetual twilight that erases the night sky.
Sheeraz Awan, the general manager of the Dubai Astronomy Group, has watched this shift with concern. "It causes us to appreciate our existence in this galaxy," he said as he guided participants through their stargazing weekend. The group's efforts represent a quiet push back against light pollution at a grassroots level. Abu Dhabi authorities have taken notice; in 2024, the capital introduced what it calls a "Dark Sky Policy" to address lighting and related issues across the entire emirate. Dubai has not publicly responded to similar concerns, though the city is home to Al Qudra Lakes, a rural area where light pollution remains comparatively low.
On the carpets laid out in the desert, families who spoke Arabic, English, and Russian gathered to watch as the half-moon slowly set over the horizon. Beyond the glow of a single small LED lamp marking the parking area, the outline of the Milky Way emerged. Nearby, laborers slept in the back of a pickup truck under the stars, unbothered by the astronomers' excitement. A camel spider—a Solifugae, a creature neither insect nor arachnid—pursued its own hunt across the sand in the faint light before vibrations from an approaching vehicle sent it scurrying back into darkness.
For those gathered that night, the view was a reminder of what the UAE's rapid development has cost. The glittering skyline that announces the nation's success to the world has inadvertently stolen something irreplaceable: the sight of billions of stars that humans have navigated by, wondered about, and mapped across millennia. As Abu Dhabi implements its new policy and volunteers like Awan continue their night journeys into the desert, there is a quiet acknowledgment that the future of stargazing in the UAE depends on deliberately protecting the darkness.