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SEEING STARS...
AND SO MUCH MORE
LOOKING TO THE SKIES FOR ANSWERS TO THE
BIG QUESTIONS CAN BE A LIFE-AFFIRMING
EXPERIENCE. BUT IT ISN’T ALL JUST STARGAZING
— SOME OF THE PLANET’S BEST DARK-SKY
DESTINATIONS OFFER ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES
THAT BRING THE COSMOS TO LIFE, MAKING EVEN
THE MOST DISTANT NEBULAS SEEM CLOSER TO HOME
WORDS: BEN LERWILLS
omewhere in the cosmic
void between Mars and
Jupiter, around 111 million
miles from Earth, there floats a
hulking, rocky lump named Vesta.
It ’s one of the largest bodies in
the asteroid belt, with a surface
area the size of a small moon
and temperatures that drop to
-200C. Back down on Earth, it ’s
2am, I’m in a warm room on a dark
hilltop in Northumberland, and a
sliced fragment of Vesta is resting
in my palm.
“I love space rocks,” says Ellie
Macdonald, one of the science
communicators at Kielder
Observatory, encouraging me
to study the interplanetary
interloper under a microscope.
“They’re the most tangible form
of astronomy.” On the table
around us are other long-distance
travellers — little chunks of the
lunar surface, and even Mars
— all of which have arrived here
in meteorite form. They represent
not so much a collection of
high-value rocks as a kind of solar
system reunion.
A few minutes later, we’re
standing outside, where the
dead-of-night clouds have rolled
back to reveal a shimmering,
psychedelic universe of pinprick
stars. Directly above us is the
unfathomable vastness of the
Milky Way, a glowing cosmic
highway furled across the night
sky. Ellie’s colleague, Liam Reid,
gives the sight some context.
“So, our sun is one of 300 billion
stars,” he says, as my mind doesloop-the-loops. “And that ’s just in
our galaxy alone. There are three
trillion other galaxies.”
In many ways, Kielder
Observatory is quite the trip. It
sits at the top of a two-mile dirt
track on the edge of Kielder itself,
one of England’s most remote
villages. As such, the observatory
is not only off-grid — think
log-burners, compost toilets
and solar and wind power — but
surrounded by darkness. Proper,
where-did-I-drop-that-glove
darkness. On the right night in
an urban park, you might be able
to pick out a few constellations
overhead. Here, by contrast, the
heavens are absolutely smothered
in stellar specks, to the point
where what you’re looking at
becomes almost more stars than
sky. To say it ’s breathtaking is
no exaggeration.
Dark sky tourism is no longer
a niche sector. In our screen-led
age, increasing numbers of us are
recognising stargazing as a chance
to reconnect to something deep
and magical: a travel experience
that puts existential awe above
Instagram likes. Northumberland
is home to the UK’s first,
and biggest, Dark Sky Park
(Northumberland National Park
and neighbouring Kielder Water
and Forest Park). With a combined
580 sq miles, it ’s Europe’s second-
largest protected night-sky
area and earns the county an
estimated £25m a year in ‘astro
tourism’ revenue. It offers expert-
run observatories, dedicatedJan/Feb 2022 179