A planning application has been submitted to Northumberland County Council for an additional small observatory building at Kielder Observatory. The proposal is a single-storey building housing the new observatory with a slide-off roof, an entrance porch and a warm room with an adjacent coffee servery. The warm room can double as a teaching space during inclement weather. Read more
Kielder star camp astronomer to recreate Hubble Deep Field picture
AS the latest Northumberland star camp opened last night an amateur astronomer has taken advantage of the countys inky black skies to peer half way back through time. Read more
Astronomers are staging a sparkling series of winter stargazing events at the new £480,000 Kielder Observatory. Since it was launched by the Kielder Partnership in April, over 1,000 people have joined public events at the spectacular new facility, which is run by the Kielder Observatory Astronomical Society . Now to cope with popular demand, weekly star parties have been organised until December 27.
Kielder has once more hosted a Star Camp event last weekend which attracted hundreds of astronomers, both professional and amateur, from all over the UK. This year, especially, they came to see and enthuse over the new state-of-the-art observatory on the hill above Kielder village, not far from Skyspace. Kielder is reputed to have some of the darkest skies in England, which makes it an ideal place for an observatory. Fortunately, at the weekend, it also had some of the clearest skies, affording the stargazers plenty of opportunities to observe and photograph stars, planets and galaxies through the sophisticated telescopes in use both in the observatory and at the Kielder campsite itself. Alas the wet weather on the Thursday and Friday before the event meant that the campers found themselves sloshing around in conditions reminiscent of the Glastonbury music festival. Nevertheless, most endured the wet and freezing cold conditions stoically and vowed to return, full of enthusiasm, next year.
While the expected Big Bang from the switching on of the £5 billion Large Hadron Collider last month turned out to be more of a squeaky pop, business is booming at the newly opened Kielder Observatory. The £480,000 state-of-the-art facility in light pollution free Kielder has attracted two top speakers in the run-up to Christmas. The man who opened the star-ship, the 14th Astronomer Royal, Sir Arnold Wolfendale, will return to give a Christmas themed talk in December.
An observatory has opened in an area of Northumberland recognised as having the least light pollution in England. The £450,000 Kielder Observatory will offer astronomers views of the universe uncluttered by intruding light from towns and cities. Read more