By Tushna Commissariat

Astronomers and star gazers rejoice! The International Dark Sky Association (IDA) declared Galloway Forest Park as the first Dark Sky Park in the UK on Monday 16 November 2009. The announcement, made during the International Year of Astronomy, is a great achievement as a result of 15 months of planning and coordinating audits, controls and readings from the forest park and nearby areas in a bid to boost tourism in south west Scotland.

The final decision was made by the IDA, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Arizona, USA. Lighting experts were brought in to make sure the standards for the IDA’s highest honor- the gold tier Dark Sky Park status - were maintained.

This requires a rating process for the sky quality meter which is best describes as a measure of the darkness of the sky in different areas worldwide.The scale extends from 0 to 25 and various locations have different readings; with the highest reading for the darkest place. For example, anywhere close to a major city would have a reading of around eight units while even a smaller town would be about 15 or 16 units on the scale. A photographer’s dark room would be 24 units. The reading for Galloway Park is 21 to 23.6 units overall, coming as close as possible to complete darkness near civilization of any sort.

Galloway Forest Park was established in 1947 on 75,000 hectares of land. It has 10 official viewing sites that are always open to the public from April to October and can be reached by foot, bike or horse. For other vehicles there is controlled access except for the two forest drives.

According to the Forestry Commission the park has 850,000 visitors each year and hopes to double the number with their new status. It is now the best place in the world for stargazing with over 7000 visible stars and views of the Milky Way and our own galaxy, which statistics show that less than 10% of people in the UK can view from their own homes. The forest also houses the Wigtownshire Astronomical Society observatory which always welcomes visitors.