Three nights a month · forty seats · cancelled if it clouds over

The hill is dark, the dome is cold, and the coffee is free

A twelve-inch reflector, two volunteers and a shed with a roof that rolls off. We open on the three darkest nights of each month and we tell you by four in the afternoon whether it is happening.

Take a seat

First dark night

The planets one

19:30 — 22:00 · all ages · forty seats

Jupiter and its four

The one that makes people gasp. Twenty minutes, and everybody gets two goes.

Saturn, if it is up

From July to December. There is no photograph that prepares anybody for it.

The Moon, badly

Too bright, ruins your night vision, and we do it anyway at the end because everybody asks.

Questions, in the warm

Half an hour in the hut with the heater on. This is the part people remember.

Second dark night

The deep sky one

21:00 — 00:30 · over twelve · twenty-four seats

Two galaxies

Faint smudges, and that is the honest description. What they are is the point, not what they look like.

A globular cluster

The one object that does look like the pictures. Bring nothing and expect nothing.

Averted vision

Ten minutes learning to look slightly to one side. It works and it is strange.

No torches

Red light only, from the moment you leave the car park. Forty minutes to dark-adapt and two seconds to ruin it.

Third dark night

The nothing-planned one

20:00 — late · members and anyone who asks · no seats

Whatever is up

Somebody opens the roof, somebody else brings a flask, and we point it at whatever is interesting.

Bring your own

If you have a telescope and no idea, this is the night to carry it up the track.

Aurora watch

Four times a year the alert goes off and everything else is abandoned. You will be texted.

It is free

No booking, no charge, no talk. Just turn up and find the red light at the gate.

Seats

The planets night, adult£9
The planets night, under sixteen£4
The deep sky night£12
The third nightfree

Family of four, planets night£22
School group, by arrangement£80
If it clouds overrefunded in full
Coffee in the hutfree, always

We decide by four in the afternoon and email everybody. Cloud is the only reason we cancel and it happens about one night in three.

Before you come up

Cloud: We email by four. If it is off, your seat moves to the next night or you get the money back — whichever you say.

Cold: It is a shed with the roof open on a hill in the dark. Dress for two hours of standing still at three degrees below whatever the forecast says.

Torches: Red light only, and phones face down in a pocket. One white screen undoes forty minutes of dark adaptation for everybody on the hill.

Getting up the track: Eight hundred metres of rough farm track from the car park, unlit. Not suitable for a wheelchair and we are sorry about that; the hut and the talk are.

Children: Any age on the planets night, over twelve on the deep sky night because it is late and slow and quiet.

Photographs: Not through our telescope, and not with a flash anywhere. Bring a camera for the sky itself and somebody will show you where to point it.

Zenith

A shed with a roof that rolls off,
at the top of the farm track.
Whitfield Fell
+44 7700 900 220

Nights

Three a month, around new moon
Decided by 16:00 on the day
Forty seats, then twenty-four

On this page

Zenith is a fictional example. The observatory, the hill, the nights and the prices do not exist. Photographs are stock images and were not taken through this telescope.