Draw Down the Stars: Kielder After Dark

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Kielder Observatory looked nothing like I expected it to. Having never been to an observatory in my life before, I expected all observatories to be huge Plexiglas domes with an even bigger telescope sticking out of the top. I have no idea where this vision came from, probably a cartoon from the eighties where the end of the telescope is an enormous distorted eye keeping a lookout at the locals down in Kielder rather than up in the skies, but it couldn’t have been more wrong. Maybe it was because we were in Hadrian’s Wall country, maybe it was designed like that, or maybe I just couldn’t think of a better analogy, but Kielder Observatory looks slightly like a Roman fort. A pre-Hadrianic fort if we’re being picky, because it was made entirely of wood in a sort of stepped-oblong kind of shape, with two turrets looking like they might step into action at any second and take out any advancing Scots who might have been looking to take sweet retribution on any English grouse-murderers who may have been in the area.

There is something of a feature that is completely unplanned but almost always happens when I go away on holiday, and that is that normal timings for day-to-day activities seem to go right out of the window. The most noticeable thing is food; eating is something that gets done when you have a spare ten minutes rather than set meal times. For once, we had plenty of time to make a meal before we needed to go to the observatory, but none of us, not even John, were hungry, so we skipped dinner and settled for a cup of tea instead, dug out our warm clothes and headed for the Observatory. The place itself is pretty close to Kielder village, the turning off the main road being literally around the corner from the castle, although there was then a two mile gravel track through the forest and uphill to navigate before we made it to the entrance. I had wondered if we were likely to get lost finding our way back from the observatory in the dark, but there is only one path surrounded by trees on both sides, so there really isn’t the faintest possibility of getting lost. There was a ditch either side of the road, so there was a perfectly good possibility of getting stuck, but that was a completely different worry.

One of the most immediate features of the observatory is how modern looking it is, despite the Roman fort-esque description. The wood is perfectly clean, unbroken and solid. Outside is a wind turbine and solar panels generating enough energy to keep the whole place afloat (and given the location, there probably would be no other way of getting electricity up there). On a day like this, where the cold northerly wind made a complete mess of hair and even the vaguely cloudy sky yielded plenty of sunshine on top of the hill, this kind of energy making made absolutely perfect sense. Inside, though, I had to wonder where all of the electricity was going, because the majority of the light came from a log burner in the corner of the room (I questioned the logic of using a log burner in a wooden building, but it seemed to be working fine), the remainder of the lighting being a dim red, the kind that you would expect to see on a sinking submarine in a war film. The toilet, we were told, though I didn’t try it myself, was one of those eco-friendly compost jobs, completing the whole environmentally-friendly feel of the place. We were to find out later in the night that the observatory was celebrating its third birthday on that very day, so the modern touches were mainly down to the fact that the building was actually pretty modern.

Amateur is we are at astronomy, we were there to see the stars. As luck would have it, though, there was plenty more on offer tonight. The observatory’s main man, Gary Fildes, started the night in the room with the log burner giving us a bit of a classroom lesson, mainly in the wonders of the solar system but also sometimes heading off into his specialist subject, the much bigger picture of the whole universe. Gary’s enthusiasm and clarity without dumbing the subject down were so good I wondered if he was once a keyboard player in a 90’s pop band. Brian Cox referencing aside, I probably learned more about astronomy in that first hour in the observatory than my entire school life. Gary kept one eye on the clock though, because he had calculated that the international space station was due to fly directly over Kielder at 9.31, and (barring a similar path the following evening) wouldn’t do so again for 18 months or so, so we had sort of stumbled on this one completely by luck. Once out on the viewing platform, we realised that it was still pretty light, and couldn’t see any stars yet. Or at least I couldn’t, but Gary pointed in the general direction of one and, once our eyes started working properly, it become increasingly clear, to the point at which I wondered how I had missed it in the first place. The use of our eyes was going to become increasingly important as the night went on, and we discovered that the use of red lights was not anything to do with the power usage, but because, once your eyes have been out in the normal white light, it takes around 40 minutes for them to get used to the darkness again fully, whereas the red lights don’t have the same effect.

As 9.30 approached, Gary took our eyes away from Saturn and out towards a small clearing in the trees, where the international space station was due to appear. I didn’t quite know what to expect here, maybe a big UFO with windows where the occupants were waving at us? I settled in the end on the fact that it would probably look like a star, albeit one flying across the early evening sky. Sure enough, though clouds obscured part of the path, we saw what looked like a bright star speed across the sky at 17,000 miles per hour, and within a minute or two disappear back beyond view. It wasn’t even dark and we hadn’t yet used a telescope, but we had already seen Saturn and a space ship. It was fast becoming a truly fascinating night.

By the time we had finished gabbling on about spaceships, it was beginning to get dark and time to have a look through the telescopes. The observatory had two large telescopes, one in each turret, as well as a smaller one on a tripod sitting on the viewing deck. Once introduced, we pretty much had free reign of the place, but for the reason of simplicity, the group (around maybe 30 of us) split into two and we ended up in the end turret ready to look through the larger (20 inch) telescope, although this was an old fashioned one that worked on the principal of pointing at the star, having a look through the eye-piece and focusing yourself. The other telescope was smaller but used a bit of technological magic to make the pictures a little bit clearer. Although darker, it was still reasonably light in the night sky, and apart from Saturn there were only one or two other stars appearing as yet, but it took a good 15 minutes or so to line the telescope up with Saturn properly, so by the time I had waited my turn and stepped up to the eye-piece, it was pretty much dark. This was the first truly astounding picture of the night: not just a star, as is visible with the naked eye, but a proper planet, with the rings around it and everything. We could even see Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The clarity was incredible, and yet the guys running the observatory were slightly disappointed because the haze and the clouds meant that it was nowhere near as clear as the previous night. As I stepped down from the telescope, I heard someone say ‘Where’s The Plough?’, to which the answer of ‘Look up’ came. I did as I was told and found the second truly astounding picture of the night. Where, only a minute earlier, there had only been only Saturn and a couple of stars in the sky, now the seven stars that make up the famous plough shone brightly and so obviously. I knew the shape because I had seen it in books, but either I have never seen it or never noticed it with such clarity before. I was pretty stunned by it, and it seemed as if more and more stars were popping up every minute.

The night continued in a similar fashion, we went up to the second telescope, smaller but clearer, and upside down, so Titan appeared on the opposite side of Saturn to a few minutes previously. Back in the classroom, we spent another 20 minutes or so listening to Gary as he went through a question and answer session on anything the group (particularly some smart-arse physics student) could throw at him, before deciding to pop back out onto the viewing deck. By now the sky was alive, hazy conditions or not, with thousands of stars, the like of which I have certainly never seen before in the orangey-hazy skies of the West Midlands. Once again I was astounded. We probably could have stayed there all night, and I got the impression that Gary and his group of volunteers would have done the same, but eventually, sometime after midnight, there was a call of ‘we’re going to wrap it up in 20 minutes or so if that’s ok’, and the night began to draw to a close. Lyndsey wondered aloud if the professionals had ever seen a shooting star, and it turns out that they happen all of the time, so maybe it is worth looking up to the skies more often.

Though it was cold and late, we were all still pretty full of energy and among the last of the group remaining (many had children with them and had left at varying times of the evening), but we eventually said our goodbyes and headed for the car park. Seconds after leaving, the door opened again and one of the volunteers popped out behind us. “I’ve been looking for you. Just seen a shooting star but when I turned round you had gone”. Any other night we probably would have been gutted, but having seen so much tonight it was nothing more than a mild disappointment. Not only that, we had one more night in Kielder and the feeling was that after everything we had seen tonight, you never know, tomorrow night might bring more of the same.

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