Dark Skies

I’m feeling a tad jealous of my brother at the moment. He lives in Southwest Scotland, not far from the Galloway Forest Park. And that park has just been designated as the first Dark Sky Park in the UK by the International Dark Sky Association. That means that the park is officially recognised as one of the best places in the UK for stargazing.

Although I live in the Dutch countryside, the Netherlands as a whole is badly affected by light pollution, and even here in our neighbourhood it can be difficult to see the Milky Way on a dark night. As a result of some recent research, it appears that the best place for stargazing is Schiermonnikoog in the province of Friesland. I see from the report that one of the sites where observations were made is the Zwarte Veen in the province of Gelderland. That’s just 15 minutes walk from here. Alas, the Zwarte Veen was way down the league table of the darkest spots in the Netherlands at number 22 out of 41 sites measured.