Adventure Group go stargazing

Seven intrepid members of the Adventure Group made the journey to the Exford Tea Rooms in Exmoor National Park, hoping to use a telescope to look at the night sky over Europe’s first designated International Dark Sky Reserve, as well as having a short walk in the reserve to stargaze.

The evening was hosted by Jo and Pete Richardson, two experienced astronomers who are involved in Wild about Exmoor and Space Detectives.

After a very good three course meal in the cosy tea rooms, Jo gave us an interesting presentation about Exmoor Dark Skies. She explained in simple terms facts about the galaxies, planets and stars in our universe. “Space is big, unfathomably big”, Jo said. Just how big the universe is became apparent as Jo described the distances in space, eg the sun is 93 billion miles from earth and our closest star is Proxima Centauri at 23.5 trillion miles away. When she illustrated the size of the earth (the size of a pea) to that of the sun (an exercise ball), we were left feeling quite humble about our own planet.

Jo and Pete think it probable there are life forms on other planets, but the distances in space mean we are unable to make contact.

Famous astronomer Carl Sagan said there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in all the beaches on earth. Within the universe, stars are continually dying by running out of fuel and being born – a nebula is a stellar nursery. The sun itself will die in about 5 billion years time and earth will be swallowed up. Dare I say, unless humans destroy earth first!

Jo talked about the problems of light pollution and its effect not only on animals but also causing confusion for important insects and sleep disruption for humans. Surprisingly there are no laws governing the sky, and our world is likely to be even more over illuminated in the future with thousands more satellites in orbit.

Unfortunately, despite our prayers to the weather gods, the sky that night wasn’t clear enough for us to go outside to stargaze. So we settled for looking at the star constellations via a virtual planetarium projector. The constellations were created by Greek shepherds who used the night sky to make sense of the seasons, making the shapes memorable by connecting them to stories.

The evening ended with encouragement and advice from Jo and Pete for viewing the sky from places closer to home – in particular for beginners looking at the moon without a telescope.

Sheila Dangar