Why the desert sky still looks like it used to
Few lights: beyond the towns the villages are small and go to bed early, so the sky stays dark down to the horizon.
Dry air: in the cool months stars sit sharp rather than blurred by haze.
- Darkness begins
- About 75 to 90 minutes after sunset
- Latitude
- Around 25 to 27 degrees north
- Clear nights
- Most nights from October to March
- Monsoon
- July to September, often cloudy
- Winter nights
- Can fall close to freezing
- A low horizon: dunes and flat scrub give you sky to the ground in every direction.
- Far enough south: you can see Canopus low over the southern horizon in winter, a star that never rises over much of Europe and North America.
- Our experience page: stargazing in the Thar explains the private evenings we arrange, with a telescope and a guide.
Choosing your night by the moon
Within a week of the new moon: the darkest skies and the brightest Milky Way. Amavasya is the new moon night itself.
A quarter moon: the best of both. Craters in the telescope after dusk, then a darker sky once it sets.
- New moon
- Amavasya, the darkest nights
- Full moon
- Purnima, silver dunes, few stars
- Moonrise
- About fifty minutes later each night
- After full moon
- Dark early evenings before moonrise
- Diwali
- New moon of Kartik, October or November
- Full moon: the dunes glow silver and you can walk without a torch. Wonderfully romantic, poor for faint stars.
- A few nights after full moon: the first hour or two after dark stays moonless before the moon climbs over the dunes.
- Festival full moons: the Desert Festival ends around the full moon of Magh, and the Pushkar fair around the full moon of Kartik. Lovely, but not for the Milky Way.
- Diwali: a dark sky, but villages lit with lamps and fireworks. A different kind of beauty.
How to look at a dark sky
Twenty minutes of dark: your eyes keep adjusting for at least that long. One glance at a white phone screen resets the clock.
Red light only: a red torch keeps your night vision. We bring them, and a head torch with a red setting is useful all journey.
- Lie flat: on a rug on the sand rather than in a chair. You see far more sky and your neck will thank you.
- Look slightly aside: faint objects show better a little to the side of where you look. Astronomers call it averted vision.
- Start with the bright: find the brightest stars and the patterns first, then let the fainter ones fill in.
- Walk away from camp: two hundred metres over a dune can make more difference than a better telescope.
- Stay together: never wander off alone in the dunes at night. It is easy to lose your bearings in the dark.
A first star-hop on a winter night
Orion, the hunter
- Find the belt: three bright stars in a short straight line, rising in the east after dusk in early winter.
- The colours: red Betelgeuse at one shoulder, blue-white Rigel at the opposite foot. Once you see star colours, you can't unsee them.
Down the belt to Sirius
- Follow the belt down and left: to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, flashing as it rises through the desert air.
- Why it twinkles so: low stars shine through more air, which bends their light about.
Up the belt to Rohini and the Krittikas
- Follow the belt up and right: to orange Aldebaran, which Indian astronomy calls Rohini.
- Keep going: to a tiny misty cluster, the Pleiades, the six Krittikas of Indian tradition. Binoculars turn the mist into dozens of blue stars.
The pointers to Dhruva
- Find Saptarishi: the seven stars of the Big Dipper, the seven sages, low in the north on winter evenings.
- Use the pointers: the two stars at the end of the bowl point to Dhruva tara, the Pole Star, about 27 degrees above the northern horizon at Jaisalmer, the same as the latitude.
Cassiopeia and the Andromeda galaxy
- The W: Cassiopeia, a crooked W of stars on the other side of the Pole Star from Saptarishi.
- The smudge: below it, under a dark sky, a faint oval glow. The Andromeda galaxy, the most distant thing you can see with your own eyes.
Agastya in the south
- Look low in the south: later in the evening for Canopus, the second-brightest star, named Agastya after the sage.
- Find a high dune: with an open view south. It sits close to the horizon.
What the sky holds through the season
October and November
The Milky Way's bright centre: in Sagittarius and Scorpius, still low in the south-west after dusk early in the season.
- Autumn stars: the great square of Pegasus overhead and Andromeda well placed.
- Comfort: warm evenings and the best season for long hours outside.
December and January
The winter jewels: Orion, Taurus, the Pleiades, Gemini and Sirius.
- The outer Milky Way: a fainter band running overhead through Cassiopeia, Perseus and Orion.
- Cold and clear: the sharpest skies of the year, with nights close to freezing.
February and March
Our favourite: mild nights, clear air and the winter stars still high after dinner.
- Zodiacal light: on the darkest nights, a faint cone of light rising in the west after dusk.
- For early risers: the Milky Way's core begins to rise before dawn.
The stars our grandmothers named
Dhruva: a young prince, spurned at his father's court, who meditated so steadfastly on Vishnu that he was given the one fixed place in the sky. Every other star turns around him.
Vashishtha and Arundhati: the middle star of the Dipper's handle is the sage Vashishtha, and its faint companion his wife Arundhati. Many Hindu couples are shown Arundhati at their wedding as a model of faithful marriage.
- Big Dipper
- Saptarishi, the seven sages
- Pole Star
- Dhruva tara
- Pleiades
- Krittika
- Canopus
- Agastya
- Lunar mansions
- Twenty-seven nakshatras
- Krittika and Kartik: the Pleiades are the foster mothers of Kartikeya, and the month of Kartik takes its name from them.
- Agastya: the sage said to have travelled south across India, which is fitting for a star that lives low in the southern sky.
- The nakshatras: Indian astronomy divides the moon's path into twenty-seven lunar mansions. Rohini is Aldebaran, and Ardra is linked with Betelgeuse.
- Still in use: families consult the nakshatras for weddings, house-warmings and the first syllable of a baby's name.
Planets, the grahas of the old astrologers
Shukra, Venus: the brightest point after the moon, low in the west after sunset or the east before dawn, depending on the season.
Brihaspati, Jupiter: also called Guru, the teacher. Binoculars held steady show up to four of its moons in a line.
- Shani, Saturn: much feared by astrologers. Its rings in a small telescope make every guest gasp, whatever their age.
- Mangal, Mars: the red planet, linked with courage and the Tuesday prayers at Hanuman temples.
- Chandra, the moon: a half moon in a telescope shows mountains and craters along the line between light and dark.
- Satellites: steady points sliding across the sky in the first hours after dusk. On a clear night you may count a dozen.
Meteor showers in the camp season
After midnight: meteors are more frequent in the small hours, as your side of the earth turns into their path.
No telescope needed: the whole sky is the instrument. Lie flat and look up, not at the horizon.
- Orionids
- Peak around 21 October
- Leonids
- Peak in mid-November
- Geminids
- Peak around 13 to 14 December, the best
- Quadrantids
- Peak in early January
- Perseids
- Mid-August, usually lost to monsoon cloud
- Check the moon: a bright moon near a shower's peak washes out all but the brightest meteors.
- Wrap up: December nights near freezing, and a shower is a long, still watch.
- Any night: even outside a shower, a dark desert sky usually gives a few shooting stars an hour.
Binoculars, telescopes and what each shows
Binoculars, 7x50 or 10x50: hundreds of stars in the Milky Way, the Pleiades as a jewel box, Jupiter's moons and the craters of the moon.
Brace them: rest your elbows on your knees or lie back. Shaking hands blur everything.
- The telescope: Saturn's rings, Jupiter's cloud bands, double stars of different colours and star clusters.
- Deep sky: the Andromeda galaxy, the Orion Nebula below the belt, and open clusters in the Milky Way.
- Download a sky app: before you leave the hotel, and set the screen to red or night mode.
- Leave lasers to the guide: green pointers are used carefully, where safe and permitted, never towards aircraft or people.
What most visitors miss
The earth's shadow: just after sunset, a blue band rises in the east with a pink belt above it. Turn your back on the sunset to see it.
Earthshine: a thin crescent moon after sunset shows its dark side faintly lit by light reflected from the earth.
- The Orion Nebula: a misty patch below the belt, a nursery of new stars, visible in binoculars.
- Star colours: orange Aldebaran beside white Sirius, red Betelgeuse beside blue Rigel.
- The morning star: if you sleep in camp, wake before dawn for Venus over the dunes and tea on the cold sand.
- The silence: stop talking for five minutes and listen. Apart from a fox or an owl, the desert at night is almost perfectly quiet.
Where we take guests to see it
Khuri, the quiet dunes
- Why: far fewer camps than Sam, and faint village lights after dark. See Khuri.
- How: a private setup on a dune away from any camp, with rugs, a fire and a telescope.
Sam, beyond the first ridge
- The catch: camps near the road at Sam stay loud and bright until late.
- The fix: we walk or drive you beyond the main ridge. Our Sam or Khuri piece compares them.
The Serai and Suryagarh
Manvar, Khimsar and Bikaner
Manvar: a tent among the dunes halfway to Jaisalmer, a fire and more stars than most guests have seen since childhood.
- Khimsar's dune village: nothing around it but sand, khejri trees and sky.
- Bikaner: a short drive out of town on a clear winter night opens the sky.
Photographing the desert night
A tripod: exposures of fifteen to twenty-five seconds are needed for stars. Any movement blurs them.
Wide and fast: a wide-angle lens with a large aperture. Focus manually on a bright star.
- Phones: most recent phones have a night mode. Rest the phone on a beanbag or the sand and keep still.
- A foreground: a dune ridge, a khejri tree or a lit tent gives the sky scale. Our guides know which dunes face the Milky Way.
- Cold batteries: winter nights drain them fast. Keep spares in an inside pocket.
- Ask before light painting: a brief, warm torch sweep over the foreground, only with the group's agreement.
- No drones: we never fly them in the desert at night. Our photography tips have more.
Jaipur and the astronomer-king
Sawai Jai Singh II: the ruler who founded Jaipur in 1727 was an astronomer who built five observatories, in Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Varanasi and Mathura.
The giant sundial: the Vrihat Samrat Yantra at the Jantar Mantar is about 27 metres tall and reads local time to about two seconds.
- Night work: observers once lined up stars against marble scales and wrote their positions into tables.
- The order to do it: the Jantar Mantar at midday in Jaipur, then the same sky at night in the Thar.
- His story: our journal on Sawai Jai Singh the astronomer tells it.
Respecting the dark
Lights low: red torches, dim screens and never a white light in anyone's eyes.
Quiet camps: we choose camps with acoustic music that switch generators off at night. Our luxury desert camp guide explains how.
- Leave nothing: every bottle, wrapper and cigarette end goes back to camp.
- Villages sleep early: desert families rise before dawn. Keep voices down near houses.
- Wildlife: foxes, hares and desert cats come out at night. Watch, never chase or feed.
- Closed shoes: in the warm months scorpions and snakes are about after dark.
Who will love a night under the Thar sky
Couples: a private dinner on a dune under the stars is a favourite on our honeymoon journeys.
Families: children love the telescope, the shooting stars and the stories. Keep it short and the jackets warm.
- Curious minds: a guide who knows the sky turns beauty into a lesson guests remember for years.
- Less suited: those who feel the cold badly in midwinter, or dislike the dark. We set up close to camp, with heaters a few steps away.
- A whole week of it: our Under the Thar Sky journey is built around desert nights.