KEEP looking right above that tree and you’ll begin to see it in a minute,’ says Reg Guille, secretary of the Sark Astronomy Society. I follow where his hand is pointing to a lazuline patch of night sky. Slowly, a pin-prick of light emerges and gradually gets brighter until it is nearly as bright as the moon. It is moving slowly but determinedly across the great expanse of stars above us. ‘That’s the International Space Station,’ Mr Guille says with all the excitement of a seven-year-old having found a piece of missing Lego. I watch in awe with the huddle of other astro-enthusiasts standing shoulder-to-shoulder in Sark’s shed-like observatory at the end of a hayfield. ‘It’s travelling at a little more than 17,000 miles per hour. They might be able to make out the lights of St Peter Port in Guernsey if they look out the window —but they won’t see us because we are dark.’
Ten years ago, in the autumn of 2011, Sark became the world’s first designated Dark Sky Island. There are no cars, so, when darkness falls, it isn’t broken by street lighting or vehicle headlights and the population of about 550 people know not to direct any outdoor lights up into the firmament. ‘We are coming up for our 10-year anniversary,’ notes Mr Guille. ‘Each year, we have to submit paperwork to prove we remain dark.’ That’s not a hard task because things don’t change fast on Sark, which operated a feudal system of government as recently as 2008 and has a tractor-drawn fire engine and ambulance. Stumbling out of the observatory, I notice a hedgehog curled up in the grass by my bicycle. As I turn on my bike light to get a closer look, I wince: my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I cycle off with the light transforming the dark path into shades of grey, like a pencil drawing.
Denne historien er fra August 18, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 18, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
