Darkness on the moors

In search of true darkness and skies that sparkle, Jamie Carter visits Yorkshire, home of the UK's newest International Dark Sky Reserves

- Jamie Carter

Tonight there's mist on the way to the moors. It creeps through the valley and blots out everything but Venus. But as the minibus climbs up the Sutton Bank escarpment, it begins to clear. By the time we arrive at the North York Moors International Dark Sky Reserve, we're high above the valley mist among heather moorland, low shrubs and stumpy trees. Above us is a big sky with only thin wisps of cloud between the bright stars. The open clusters within Auriga are naked-eye bright and so are the faint suns of Gemini, Taurus and Ursa Minor, all now so elusive from our towns and cities.

"Does anyone know, what is the furthest thing it's possible to see with the naked eye?" says astronomer Richard Darn, our host for the evening. "The Moon?" says a voice from the dark. "A nebula?" asks another. The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million lightyears from Earth, is soon picked out with a green laser. It's waiting in the crosshairs of a Takahashi refractor for all to inspect. It's an exciting moment for many. In its wake comes the equally crowd-pleasing Pleiades, the Orion Nebula, the M81 and M82 galaxies, double star Almach, and a waning comet, C/2022 E3. The views are delivered crisply and quickly, but some guests seem happy just to stare at a 'blanket of stars' they've heard much about but rarely seen.

Nightseeing trip