Dark Sky Tourism in the UK

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Across the UK, the contemporary sky at night is commonly tinged with a sickly orange glow. Aside from those folks lucky enough to live outside the light-polluted areas of UK street lighting – settled happily in their teak garden furniture for late April's Lyrids meteor shower – most folks with an urge to gaze skywards and glimpse some of the celestial events of 2011 will have to sling their outdoor furniture in the auto boot and head to any of the UK's dark sky tourist hot spots for the perfect view.

As component of the 2009 Year of Astronomy (celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's initially glimpses of the night sky via a telescope), the International Astronomical Union and Unesco joined forces to promote the Dark Skies Awareness scheme. A crucial area of the project was to encourage preservation of public and scientific night study – stargazing, meteor shower viewing and so on.

The Dark Skies Association cites a Dark Sky Park as "a park or other public land possessing exceptional starry night skies and natural nocturnal habitat exactly where light pollution is mitigated and natural darkness is beneficial as an essential educational, cultural, scenic, and natural resource." Some of the most unspoilt skies in the developed globe rest over the protected lands of National Parks and Nature Reserves.

In the UK, numerous parks went head to head for the honour of becoming the initially Dark Sky Park in Britain. In the end, Galloway National Park beat Exmore and the Peak District National Parks, and from 2010 enjoyed its glistening status as a Dark Skies Association accredited Dark Sky Park.

A quantity of other UK National Parks and Reserves are in the procedure of mapping their dark skies in order to apply for Dark Sky Park status. Suggestions from the Dark Skies Association and Natural England is to keep checking for local updates (and keep the outdoor furniture handy, even though the teak garden furniture may be a small weighty!)