Turn off the lights
Why it’s tough being a British stargazer
It is approaching midnight and high up in the Peak District all is silent, with only the occasional headlights from a passing car slicing through the gloom. On a good night, from here one could hope to see the Milky Way, Andromeda Galaxy and the International Space Station, on which British astronaut Tim Peake spent 186 days.
It is a few days before the summer solstice, which this year coincided with last night’s Strawberry Moon, a rare astronomical occurrence that gives the moon an amber appearance, cloud-cover permitting.
But ours is not a good night. Thick clouds scud at shutter speed across the moon, frustrating the small huddle from the Sheffield Astronomical Society peering through their telescope, hoping for a clear view of the night sky.
There is another culprit, too; in the distance, patches of light spill out across the darkened moors. From Sheffield, a few miles behind us, and Buxton to our left, what the novelist EM Forster called the “red rust” of urban conurbation creeps ever closer.
“The situation is very serious,” says Darren Swindells, 51, from behind the lens of his telescope. “A few years ago, we had an observing session and an old lady came up to me and said: ‘When I was little the sky was full of stars. Where have they all gone?’”
The answer, according to a new report released by the Campaign to Protect Rural England earlier this month, is light pollution, which has obliterated vast swathes of our night sky. According to the report, which used new satellite mapping data to assess night blight across the country, only 22 per cent of England remains untouched by light pollution (compared with 57 per cent of Wales and 77 per cent of Scotland).
West and South Yorkshire are the two worst counties recorded, followed by Berkshire and Cheshire. London, unsurprisingly, is the brightest, but the worst light polluting spot assessed in the report is the Tata steelworks in Rotherham, not far from us here.
Emma Marrington, the author of the report, describes the findings as “pretty shocking”, with implications not just for wildlife but also human health, as our technology interrupts the circadian rhythms of the world.
In Britain, the absence of our night sky is conversely coinciding with a rebirth in popularity of astronomy. There is, of course, the effect of Tim Peake whose incredible six-month mission came to an end at the weekend. While in space, Peake beamed staggering pictures back to Earth, including one of the Peak District, bible black, illuminated by urban sprawl on every side.
A few years ago, Peake was invited by the Sheffield Astronomical Society to give a talk at the city’s main university which was attended by hundreds of students and schoolchildren. Swindells, who is vice president of the society, founded in 1934, says the television presenter Professor Brian Cox has also helped excite a new generation in stargazing. The group presently has around 100 members of all different ages.
Swindells also got into astronomy as a young lad, heading out on the streets of Sheffield with his father. “We used to go out on a night time and you could see the Milky Way,” he says. Thanks to artificial lighting, the glowing band of our galaxy is now no longer visible to one third of humanity.
Across South Yorkshire, several councils – including Rotherham – are now installing new LED street lights to stop needless illumination of the night sky. Others such as Essex County Council are switching off an increasing number of lights at night.
This, says Mike Collinson, the 69year-old treasurer of the Mexborough and Swinton Astronomical Society, is a very welcome step. “It is criminal,” says Collinson, who served 30 years in the Merchant Navy and has seen some of the clearest skies on Earth. He recalls watching Halley’s Comet once pass across the Persian Gulf with his naked eyes,.
“If you could take people to a darksky place and say this is what you should see, I’m sure it would change in a fortnight. But people are too busy watching television or playing games on computers, so nothing happens.”
However, there is hope, in protections being put in place by England’s national parks, which contain over half of all England’s pristine night skies. Kielder Forest in Northumberland and Exmoor have been awarded “Dark Sky” status. Last month, the South Downs national park was also designated as an International Dark Sky Reserve.
“There is no comparison to looking at the night’s sky when I was younger,” says Collinson. “But hopefully it will get better.”