Dark Skies Festival

Start Date

14th Feb 2020

End Date

1st Mar 2020

Location

Various venues (see website for details)

Lineup

BBC Sky at Night presenter Chris Lintott

Details

While 2020 is being trumpeted as the year that space travel becomes a reality, the fifth Dark Skies Festival, held jointly by the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales National Parks, will show just how much visitors can enjoy the cosmos without leaving planet Earth.

The 17-day Festival which coincides with the February half term holidays, will comprise more than 100 events including virtual space travel courtesy of pop-up planetariums, stargazing safaris at beauty spots such as Bolton Castle in the Yorkshire Dales and Blakey Ridge in the North York Moors, after-dark runs and bike rides as well as talks and crafting sessions that fire the imagination.

New events in the 2020 Festival include an evening with BBC Sky At Night presenter Chris Lintott who will be showing how, through the power of Citizen Science, anybody can get involved with helping scientists make the next space discoveries.

Other new events will capitalise on how the darkness of the National Parks’ skies, as a result of low light pollution, can be harnessed as a kind of natural health service.

For instance Adventures for the Soul will be staging yoga and mindfulness sessions at Great Fryup Dale in the North York Moors before leading people on a guided night walk into the peaceful countryside to increase a feeling of calmness and being in-tune with the body’s senses.

Creating an air of wonderment to help inspire the next generation will be a recurring theme threading through much of the Festival’s programme. Lime Tree Observatory at Grewelthorpe will stage a tour of the solar system aimed at kids, while a host of other locations will be holding galactic treasure hunts, moonrock geocaching events, crafting sessions where rockets and lanterns are created, storytelling evenings and candlelit village walks.

Disabled Facilities

Some events will have disabled facilities (see website)