Morocco’s window to the stars
I find myself alone with telescope to explore the night sky, silently in awe of the desert
The pristine dark skies of the North African country are attracting the interest of astronomers worldwide to stargaze from its mountains and the desert. Morocco is a popular destination for travellers looking for sun, tagine, colourful architecture and camping in the Sahara.
Less well known is its potential as a haven for astro-tourism, offering the opportunity to stargaze at dark skies in the empty deserts and the High Atlas Mountains of North Africa.
“One of the best things you can observe in the sky is the shooting stars,” says Hafili Mohamad Ali, also known as ‘Astro Ali’, a local astronomy enthusiast. “You just open your eyes and wait, and sometimes you can see magical moments in the sky.”
Ali runs his own company, Astronomie Marrakech, which promotes astronomy through workshops, exhibitions and educational activities. He became interested in the night sky as a teenager twenty four years ago. He hasn’t looked back since, and enjoys looking at sky maps of different constellations and linking them with ancient mythologies of civilisations like the Arabs and Greeks. Sometimes he says he wonders if he is still living on Earth. “My head is in the sky all the time,” he says. Among the many hats he wears, Ali is a cofounder and member of a project called the Atlas Dark Sky. The project seeks to create a starry sky reserve of 80 kilometres radius. “When we are successful in creating this reserve, it will become the biggest one in the world,” he says. The potential of this dark sky reserve was made apparent to me on a trip to the Oukaimeden Observatory in the High Atlas Mountains.
At an altitude of some 2,750 metres, the area is situated over 70km south of Marrakech and is better known as a ski-resort. The observatory was founded in 2007 and is involved in several collaborative international projects.
I came here with Zouhair Benkhaldoun, director of the Oukaimeden Observatory. He is also president of the Moroccan National Committee for Astronomy (MNCA) and president of the Arab Astronomical Society. Our journey started from a cafe near Cadi Ayyad University, where Benkhaldoun does his research. When we finally get to the observatory, we are warmly greeted by the caretaker who lives here with a cat.
The telescopes are stored inside white-coloured domes situated across the grounds of the observatory. I am taken around for a tour and we enter inside one of the domes. With the press of a button a section of the cylindrical roof is parted to reveal the sky above a large telescope with a 20 inch aperture.
As it starts to get dark, we head inside the main building into a large room that is fully packed. Most of the people are part of the French delegation, which also includes some children. Benkhaldoun makes a presentation about the observatory, including its history and the various international collaborations it is involved with. This includes research into exoplanets, space weather, near Earth objects and variable stars. After the presentation, when we leave the building, everything has transformed. There is pitch darkness outside. With no artificial lights around, the sky is lit in a dazzling display of stars and galaxies.
To witness an authentic dark sky with the naked eye is a unique experience in itself, making visible parts of the night sky that are hidden to a large part of the population today, thanks to the constant glow of neon-lights, street lamps and city structures.
Achievements
We soon leave the observatory and trek back to the lodge. It is a good distance and the night is cold. Benkhaldoun tells me the development of astronomy at his university in Marrakech has exploded in recent time. “We do all our research remotely,” he says.
The data they collect through the telescopes is analysed in computers at the observatory. This information is later downloaded in Marrakech, as well as by international partners. The observatory collaborates with institutions in places like Belgium, South Korea, United States, Saudi Arabia and France.
Among its more prominent achievements was the observatory’s contribution to Nasa’s discovery of exoplanets around the dwarf star Trappist-1, with the help of a doctoral student at Cadi Ayyad University.
Benkhaldon’s long-term ambition is to have a telescope with a two meter (79 inch) diameter in the Atlas Mountains to be able to carry out even more sophisticated research.
A few days after the trip to Oukaimeiden, I am about to go with “Astro Ali” for an evening of astronomy at the Terre des Etoiles, an ecolodge located in the Agafay desert at a 45 minute drive outside the city.
After zigzagging through a roughly hewn path in the barren landscape, we finally arrive at Terre des Etoiles. There is still some daylight. Ali has three telescopes. He needs to fetch a trolley to transport the one he has brought today, a Skywatcher Dobsonian telescope with an aperture of 12 inches.
He sets it up in an open space near an outdoors bar. As it starts to get dark, people start to approach Ali to look through the lens of his telescope. He shows them the moon and different planets and stars in the night sky.
Although the sky here is not as dark as at Oukaimeden, the view is still impressive considering we are not very far from Marrakech.
We stay until it is closing time and all the guests have left one by one. Soon Ali goes to join the staff for a very late dinner before we can head back to Marrakech.
Having already eaten at the restaurant, I find myself alone with the telescope to explore the night sky, silently in awe of the desert setting and the display of endless stars above.