All year
First Light
The introduction. A guide walks you from the naked eye to a 12-inch reflector across four hours, so the sky stops being a blur and starts being a map.
$120
Bortle 2 · three hours north
Three hours from the city, the sky comes back.
Guided nights under one of the darkest skies you can drive to before midnight. Telescopes, blankets and someone who knows what you are looking at — all provided.
Why here
A number, rather than a promise.
Dark skies are graded on the Bortle scale, from 1 — where the zodiacal light casts shadows — to 9, where you can see maybe a dozen stars. Most cities are an 8. Most “countryside” is a 5.
We measure ours every clear night with a sky-quality meter, and publish the reading. It sits at 2, which means the Milky Way is not a faint smudge here — it is the brightest thing overhead.
Measured last night
21.86 mag/arcsec² · Bortle 2 · seeing good, no moon until 03:40.
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Left is darker. The city you drove from is somewhere near the right-hand end.
The nights
Four ways to spend a clear evening.
May to September
Deep Sky
Past midnight, when the Milky Way is overhead and nothing on the horizon is glowing. Nebulae, globular clusters, and a long look at whichever planet is up.
$220
New moon weeks
Camera Night
Bring your own camera. We supply the tracker, the dark, and someone who will stop you wasting three hours on a badly focused star field.
$260
Perseids and Geminids
Meteor Watch
No telescopes at all. Reclining chairs, a shower at its peak, and the specific pleasure of an entire group gasping at the same time.
$70
What you get
Turn up with a coat.
A sky worth the drive
Bortle 2 on a good night — the second-darkest classification there is, and the darkest you will reach in three hours of driving. The Milky Way casts a shadow here.
Guides who are actually astronomers
Everyone leading a night has spent years at an eyepiece. You will get straight answers, including the answer that nobody knows yet.
Nothing you have to buy first
Telescopes, red torches, chairs, blankets and star charts are all here. Bring a warm coat and a thermos, and that is the whole packing list.
Small groups, always
Never more than eight at a telescope. If everyone is queueing, nobody is looking, and the queue is the thing that ruins a night out under the sky.
“I have looked up my whole life and I had never actually seen it. Nobody warns you that it has a shape.”Amara O. · First Light, March
The next new moon is a Thursday.
Nights run Thursday to Sunday and cap at eight people. If it clouds over we call it by 3pm and you keep your money.
Check availability