Kevin Rushby, The Guardian, October 21, 2013
Do you live by the moon? Steve Owens does. On nights when there is no moon, Steve goes to work, and tonight he's out on a lonely hill in Dumfries and Galloway with his telescope.
"We'll take a look," he says. "Jupiter should be visible."
Half an hour later, we are admiring several Jovian moons and wondering if we can stay awake to greet the rings of Saturn. Around us the sheep on the upland pastures are silent, a tawny owl hoots in the dark woods below, and there is just a single electric light visible, from the farm in the valley.
"I'll talk to them," says Steve. "That lamp could be shielded."
It has become something of a passion for Steve, the darkness. He is the world's only dark skies consultant and author of Stargazing for Dummies, a great introduction to finding and naming the objects in the night sky. I had come across Steve through his Twitter feed, which is a wonderful source of up-to-the-minute stargazing tips. When I discovered that he did personal stargazing lessons in Galloway's 300-square-mile Dark Sky Park, the first such place in Britain, I leapt at the chance.
"There is very little light pollution here," says Steve. "But if you go deep into the park, the best darkness is at Glentrool."
The best darkness is probably not near you, not if you live in the average British town or city. Holding back the night has been a human obsession for centuries, but it got a massive power boost when Joseph Swan commercialised production of the light bulb in the 1880s. In the rush to electrification and modernity, a few people warned of the dangers for migratory birds, nocturnal wildlife and candle manufacturers, but no one seems to have considered the human being. Might darkness-deprivation be bad for us? Medical researchers have certainly begun to think so. Studies have linked darkness-deprivation to increased levels of cancers and depression. The death of darkness is bad news for astronomy, too, cutting the flow of information and also the number of young people who know their way around a night sky.
In the 1990s, two US astronomers, David Crawford and Tim Hunter, were so concerned by the effects on their science that they started the International Dark-Sky Association, which now has accredited a dozen parks worldwide as places that value their darkness and protect it. There is even the world's first "dark park" city: Flagstaff, Arizona. In the UK, we have Dumfries and Galloway, plus reserves in Wales, Exmoor and the Channel Islands, and hopefully some more to come. The truth for most of us, however, is that darkness in the UK is light years away. So I decided the best thing to do was pack up and visit south-west Scotland, which coincidentally is one of the least visited and most beautiful areas of Britain.
During the day I had cycled part of the Southern Upland Way and seen just one solitary sheep farmer. This magnificent 212-mile, coast-to-coast route ought to be required travelling for sword-and-sorcery novelists: even the few miles I covered could have fuelled several Tolkein novels with its place names: Rig of the Jarkness, Clints of the Buss, Nick of Torr and the unforgettable peak of Curleywee. Above Loch Dee all other bike tracks turned back and I soldiered on, pushing my bike through an unseasonal snowdrift to be rewarded with great views down into Glen Trool, then an exhilarating descent to the stone tribute to Robert the Bruce, who won a skirmish against Edward I's men here in 1307.
It had been a magnificent ride, but I was glad to get back to Brockloch Farm, where I was staying in their unusual modernist bothy on the hill. With its wall of glass and hillside location, it is the perfect pad for astronomy, especially when the sky is clear and you have a guide as enthusiastic and knowledgeable as Steve Owens.
"See that W-shaped constellation overhead? That's Cassiopeia. Now follow the right-hand V down to that bright star and then perpendicularly up past a faint star to a fuzzy patch of light. Got it? That's the Andromeda galaxy: 2.5m light years away and containing around a trillion stars."
Eventually, however, Steve had to head off to another gig and I was on my own.
Wandering further up the hill, careful not to switch on the torch and ruin my dark-adapted eyesight, I found that my feet did not stumble, nor did light-deprived sheep blunder into me. Actually, starlight gave just sufficient subtle illumination for me to dodge the occasional tussock and mud pool. It is a kind of sight that us townies rarely employ: one that relies on the peripheral and the marginal. I was avoiding obstructions that I could not actually see if I stared directly at them, an effect, I seem to remember from schoolboy biology, that depends on the distribution of rod and cone cells in my retinas. It's a bizarre truth that in very low light, humans can see, but only when they don't look.
On the hilltop I lay down on my back and strafed the Milky Way with binoculars, revealing acres of dappled heaven thick with stellar objects. It was almost overpowering, the sense of how near the night sky appeared, and I had to put the binos down.
Some years ago, on a dhow sailing across the Indian Ocean, I'd sat with the Yemeni captain and heard him recite from memory the ways of the stars: epic poems of the 15th century that way-marked star routes across the ocean to destinations such as Zanzibar, Mombasa and Serendib in Sri Lanka. The rising of certain constellations at precise points on the horizon both timed the seasons and located the desired destination for the mariners. Without the stars, they were lost.
What about our own forebears, I wondered? Even if we hadn't had the scientific approach of the Arabs to topics like navigation, the night sky must have been an ever-present dimension, exerting a deep and significant influence on rituals and story-telling. Lying under it like this I felt, in a small way, reconnected.
The moments of magic were soon over and I started to feel quite cold. A hot water-bottle and a whisky would have been a good idea. Saturn is still an hour away. Are the stars disappearing over in the west? A bank of cloud is creeping in, promising to snuff out Saturn at the very moment it arrives. I wait 15 minutes, by which time half the sky is gone and a light prickling of icy frost is tickling my face.
Perhaps I will stay up late and wait for Saturn tomorrow night; besides, there's another mountain bike route I want to try – that will take me to Murray's Monument, a landmark at the heart of the Dark Park – and I'll need an early start.
I wander back down the hill towards my space-age bothy, where one small lamp is blazing and the building appears to hover in the darkness like an alien space ship freshly arrived from the Andromeda galaxy.
• The trip was provided by Visit Scotland, visitscotland.com. Brockloch Bothy (01556 650249 or 07812 357 824, brockloch.co.uk) sleeps four from £350 for a three-night weekend. Steve Owens (07879 058120, [email protected], twitter @darkskyman) runs regular stargazing breaks at hotels including the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright (01557 330402, selkirkarmshotel), Kirroughtree House in Newton Stewart (01671 402141, mcmillanhotels.co.uk/kirroughtree-house-hotel) and Glenapp Castle (01465 831212, glenappcastle.com). Travel to Dumfries was provided by Virgin (08719 774 222, virgintrains.co.uk) and Scotrail (scotrail.co.uk). Advance returns from London costs from £51.50, sleepers from £106.40 single.
Steve Owens' book Stargazing For Dummies, is published by Wiley, at £12.99. To buy a copy for £10.39 with free UK p&p call 330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk