Starry, starry night

There are many reasons to recommend living on or very close to Exmoor, not least its stunning landscape - a combination of moorland, woodland, fields, and sea - and the wildlife. Those of us who live here would add the night sky, which is swathe of ebony velvet, studded with stars.

The first night I spent in this house was New Year's Eve 1997 and my daughter and I invited a group of friends to celebrate my long-planned escape to the country. At midnight, we went out into the garden, looked up at the sky and gasped. Living in London, as I had almost all my life, I had rarely glanced upwards at night because there was so little to see. Here I can gaze at the Milky Way, meteors and stars galore. According to this recent article in the Daily Telegraph, city dwellers are lucky if they can see 200 stars; look up to a dark sky and it is more like 7,000 . . .

To see a night sky in its full beauty, you need an absence of artificial light - and, thankfully, Exmoor has that absence. This has now been officially recognised: Exmoor National Park has been designated an International Dark-Sky Reserve, only the second place in the world to receive this accolade. (The first was Mont Métignac in Canada.) Read more about it here. 

A recent move on the part of a few neighbours to have more artificial lights installed in the village (so that they wouldn't have to carry torches when they walked to the village hall . . . ) was roundly defeated by a sizeable majority. Most of us wanted less artificial light, not more. Meanwhile, as a carbon reduction measure our local authority is switching off street lighting in most areas between the hours of 12.30 and 5.30am, so now we can enjoy Exmoor's night sky at full strength. 

I find all this quite thrilling and, unsurprisingly perhaps, have had this song in my head for days:

Comments

[Shelley]

So beautiful! I never look to see stars anymore, living here in Britain. Some years back we all gathered at a friend's house in Bellingham, Northumberland for a BBQ the day before the show and a fell race. Her manor house was right on the river and I wondered down away from the house for a while. Looking up, I fetched some of the others down to see what was for many of them their first sight of the Milky Way. I'm sorry to say I would feel less safe without the street lighting here in suburbia by the sea, but it does certainly come at a cost.

[Pamela (Lady Luz)]

So true. I remember being awestruck with the big skies and fabulous starlight in West Penwith, Cornwall, when I moved there.

We camped out once in the desert in the Middle East to be able to catch the irises after the rain. Quite a different night sky and just as fascinating, of course.

[materfamilias]

I love that Don Vincent tribute to Van Gogh, lovely. We get reasonably dark nights here on our little island, although we're always fighting the small faction who want more lighting. Across the Strait, the city of Vancouver beams its cumulative brightness into the dark, probing the sky rather relentlessly. We're a small enough community here that I feel quite safe walking in the dark, relish it, actually, although I try to remember to carry a small flashlight in my pocket. It's such a different sensation to walking along a lit sidewalk. Thanks for this lovely post.

[Lydia]

I love the sky and never stop looking for things in it. We have a lovely uncovered back deck and live 15 ks from the nearest town so do not get any interference from artificial lighting. I look up and see millions of stars. I see satellites, the space station occasionally, UFO's, planes, both huge and small, the RACQ Rescue helicopter, Wedge Tailed Eagles, sometimes 5 at a time, many types of birds and beautiful cloud formations and lastly, lightning... just beautiful and I am so grateful.