Over the quiet winter months I have been keeping myself busy undertaking some voluntary work at the National Park’s Sill visitor centre helping them with stargazing evenings.
Looking up at the stars has always fascinated me. We are lucky to have the Northumberland Dark Sky facilities on our doorstep.
if you live or are visiting the area I would encourage you to try stargazing. You will not be disappointed.
To wet your appetite here are some facts that I have picked up:
- Northumberland is the darkest county in England covering 580 square miles with an average of only 2 residents per square kilometre and is Europe’s largest dark sky area.
- In a city you will see an average of 5-10 stars. In a dark sky area you will see up to 2000.
- 85% of the U.K. population have never seen a true dark sky.
- The light from our nearest star takes 1500 years to travel through space before our eyes pick it up (putting it into perspective this light was created not long after the Romans left Britain)
- Some of the light from the stars we cam see further away takes in excess of 20,000 years to reach us!
- There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone and there are 2.5 trillion galaxys in total. If we assume 8 planets per star that is a heck of a lot of planets (I will let somebody else do the maths!)
It certainly does make you wonder about what other life may be out in space.
Some excellent venues close by for star gazing are:
The Sill Discovery centre
www.northumberlandnationalpark.org
Battlesteads Hotel
Kielder observatory
Some great apps are available to help you identify star constellations includingStellariums Sky map,Night sky and Star chart.