Kielder Observatory is the only purpose-built public observatory in a truly dark sky location...in the whole of Europe! Come and enjoy an incredible night of stargazing with us.

If you want to come and learn about the night skies, study the constellations, get advice on how to use your own kit for observing and astrophotography, view distant galaxies, neubular and star clusters through our powerful telescopes...and much, much, more - this night is for you! This image of the Orion Nebula was taken from Kielder Observatory - learn what is is and how to see it with the naked eye!

For this Stargazing Introduction, we open up our Observatory and hand it over to you. Gary, our Founder Director, will give you an expert talk on the constellations and introduce you to some incredible free Planetarium software that you can use at home. We will teach you how to use the constellations as 'maps' to find your way around the starry skies.

After the talk, we will head outside so you can practice what you have learned under our wonderful astronomically dark skies. We will be on hand to answer all of your questions, guide you around the night sky and supervise the use of our telescopes to look at distant objects in our Universe - from the planets of our own Solar System to galaxies millions of light years away!