for Northumberland came in 2013 when the entire national park housing Hadrian’s Wall, along with Kielder Water and Forest Park, some 1,500 sq km, was awarded Dark Sky Park status, the only one in England. Dark Sky Parks are rare. The 2013 Star Count revealed that only 5% of the UK population can see more than 31 stars on a good night. The Tucson, Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) confers the status only on places that take major steps to avoid light pollution. Recipients must also prove their night skies are sufficiently dark. In Northumberland Dark Sky Park, as the area was rebadged, it is so dark that Venus casts a shadow on the Earth. Duncan Wise, visitor development officer for the Northumberland National Park Authority, helped to spearhead the campaign for dark-sky status after the Council for the Protection of Rural England found it was one of Britain’s most tranquil places. “We tend to look at landscape as everything up to the horizon,” Wise said. “But what about what’s above it?” Wise and others spent years drawing up their submission to the IDA, collecting reams of light readings and forming an alliance of local councils, parks’ bodies and community groups to produce an exterior lighting master plan that influences the construction of new developments in the area. Their efforts have been vindicated. Many of the 1.5 million who