News.Scotland.Org

Galloway Forest Park in Scotland  holds the rare distinction of being the first area outside America to be one of the best stargazing spots in the world. It is the premier  Dark Sky Park in the UK and the fourth in the world with the other three places in the US including  the Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, the Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania and the Geauga Park in Ohio.

Set up in 1947, Galloway Forest Park is spread over 300 square miles making it the largest in  Britain. The dark Sky Park  title  presented by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), is in recognition of the minimum pollution levels in the air, making the sky pitch dark at night. The quality of the sky above the park was measured using a sky quality meter to make the readings and Galloway Forest Park registered 23 while the most likely figures for an average city will only be 15 or 16. The night sky above Galloway forest park is close to a dark room in a photographer;’s studio which is rated at 24. You can see as many as 7000 stars in this sky while an average city sky would allow you to spot only a few hundreds of them even on  a perfectly cloudless night! The best part is that there are not many buildings around the park to obstruct your views of the far away galaxies including Milky way and Andromeda.

Galloway forest park is easily accessible from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and Northern England, which would make it more popular among the star gazers. With increasing pollution levels, such skies are fast disappearing and it is estimated that Milky Way is visible to only less than 10 percent of the people in the UK from where  they live . Pitch dark skies are fast disappearing due to industrialization and enormous pollution levels that many children grow up in their city homes without ever seeing a star! We all should strive to bring in more names to the coveted dark sky list by being responsible in our actions.