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Kenya Kenya volcano

Central Island

You can see 181 km from here, looking south-east.

Calculating the panorama…

Drag to turn around. The relief is drawn 2.2 times taller so the ridges can be read; far ridges are paler, as in the real air.

The view

Up to 181 km away.

Calculated on the relief one degree at a time, up to 250 km, with the curvature of the Earth and the refraction of the air: what stands above the horizon from here.

74out of 100

Our own rating, from the relief and the climate only: open horizon (35 points), how far you see (25), sea and named peaks in view (20) and clear months (20).

  • 181 kmFarthest ridgelooking south-east
  • 100%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
  • 2Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
  • 517 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint

The 2 peaks you can name from here

From west to east as you turn around: height, distance and direction. Each one links to its guide on Peakyas, our mountain atlas.

From the relief only: buildings, trees and haze are not in the model. On a hazy day you see much less; 250 km is the limit of our calculation.

The sun

The best sunsets are from December to February.

When the sun really disappears from this viewpoint — behind the relief or into the sea — and in which direction, on the 15th of each month, in local time.

  1. Janwest4 min before the sea-level sunset73%
  2. Febwest4 min before the sea-level sunset66%
  3. Marwest2 min before the sea-level sunset52%
  4. Aprwest2 min before the sea-level sunset36%
  5. Maywest4 min before the sea-level sunset52%
  6. Junnorth-west4 min before the sea-level sunset60%
  7. Julwest4 min before the sea-level sunset59%
  8. Augwest4 min before the sea-level sunset62%
  9. Sepwest2 min before the sea-level sunset62%
  10. Octwest2 min before the sea-level sunset45%
  11. Novwest4 min before the sea-level sunset52%
  12. Decsouth-west4 min before the sea-level sunset69%
  • Time: when the sun goes behind the horizon you see from here.
  • Minutes: how much earlier the relief hides the sun.
  • %: share of clear sky that month (NASA, 2001–2020).

The highlighted months are the clearest. Golden hour starts about an hour before.

The place

Central Island.

Island in Lake Turkana, Kenya

Central Island is a volcano in Kenya, 517 m above the sea.

On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 181 km away, looking south-east.

2 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Mount Kulal (2,380 m), 130 km away.

The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 100% of the circle.

The skies are clearest from December to February.

Tilapia Lake
Anne Wambui Ndungu · CC BY-SA 4.0

Get there and stay

Plan the visit

A guided tour, a bed nearby, a car.

Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.

From above

The viewpoint and its surroundings.

The satellite image of the 6 × 6 km around the viewpoint, with what OpenStreetMap shows nearby.

Central Island seen from above (Sentinel-2)
Seen from above: Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 (EOX, CC BY 4.0), 6 × 6 km, north up. Points © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Around, in OpenStreetMap

    • other viewpoints within 5 km
    • named peaks within 5 km
    • cable car and funicular stations within 5 km
    • marked trails within 3 km
    • shelters and huts within 5 km
    • car parks within 3 km
    • visitor centres within 5 km
    • restaurants and cafés within 3 km
    • campsites within 10 km
    • places to stay within 10 km

    Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit. A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.

    In our other atlases

    What you see from Central Island, and what is near.

    Everything around this viewpoint — mountains, water, forests, birds, caves and the night sky — in the family's atlases.

    Figures from the sister sites' databases (Wikidata, HydroATLAS, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, GBIF). Links open when each site is online.

    Photographs

    The view, as people saw it.

    Lake Turkana Central Island
    Shaan Hurley · CC BY 2.0
    Lake Turkana's Central Islands
    Peter Etelej · CC BY 2.0

    Other viewpoints nearby.

    Central Island

    Kenya

    • 74Viewyas Score
    • 181 kmFarthest ridge
    • 2Peaks in view
    • 517 mAltitude

    Mount Elgon

    Uganda · 314 km

    • 72Viewyas Score
    • 249 kmFarthest ridge
    • 5Peaks in view
    • 4,304 mAltitude

    See the guide

    Kinyeti

    South Sudan · 352 km

    • 79Viewyas Score
    • 249 kmFarthest ridge
    • 11Peaks in view
    • 3,170 mAltitude

    See the guide

    Where these figures come from

    Name and typeWikidata (Q1053880) · CC0
    SunJ. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms
    Peaks in viewPeakyas (Wikidata, CC0)
    Panorama and altitudeCopernicus DEM GLO-90 / GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA
    CloudsNASA POWER (CERES SYN1deg, 2001–2020; MERRA-2)
    What is around© OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL
    ImagesEOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons
    Sister atlasesPeakyas, Darkskyas

    Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.

    The family

    Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves, dark skies, viewpoints, birdwatching or forests?

    Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, in seven languages.