The Best Dark Sky Sites in the UK for Astrophotography

Britain is small and brightly lit, so its certified dark sky sites matter more than they would in a larger, emptier country. For most of the population, the choice is one of these or several hours of driving to find a dark sky at all.

Galloway Forest Park, Scotland

The UK’s first Dark Sky Park, designated in 2009. It covers 300 square miles of forest and hills in Dumfries and Galloway, and it is dark enough that over 7,000 stars are visible to the naked eye on a clear night. A typical suburban sky shows a few hundred at most. There are three visitor centers, at Glentrool, Kirroughtree and Clatteringshaws, each with a Dark Sky information point, so it is set up for visitors.

For astrophotography its size is the main advantage. There is enough unbroken dark area that light domes from nearby towns on the horizon are less of a problem than at smaller sites, which matters for anything wide-field.

Northumberland National Park and Kielder Water & Forest Park, England

Gold-tier status, the highest rating. Together they form England’s largest protected dark sky area at 572 square miles, across the national park and the neighboring forest park. There are many Dark Sky Discovery sites in the wider area, so you can pick a spot depending on where you are coming from.

For most of England this is the practical choice: closer to the big population centers than Galloway, and properly dark rather than just darker than home.

Exmoor National Park, England

Designated Europe’s first Dark Sky Reserve in 2011. It has sixteen Dark Sky Discovery sites and an annual Dark Skies Festival each autumn, which is worth timing a visit around if you want talks and events as well as observing. Being in the south-west, it saves a long drive for anyone who would otherwise go the length of the country to Northumberland or Galloway.

The weather

For most people most of the time, cloud limits British astrophotography more than light pollution does. A certified dark sky site on a cloudy night gets you nothing a cloudy back garden doesn’t. Check the forecast for the specific site rather than committing to a fixed date. The drive only pays off on a clear night, and in the UK that is the thing to plan around.

Finding local help

The British Astronomical Association keeps information on protected dark-sky areas and is the obvious first stop for anything more specific than a national list. A local BAA-affiliated society will know which nearby spot people are using this month. That changes with tree growth, new development and local lighting in ways no fixed list keeps up with.

Wherever you end up

Akastroid’s gradient removal step is there for the difference between a properly dark sky and the sky most of us shoot under. A session from Galloway and a session from a back garden under an orange sky are graded and stacked the same way. What differs is how much the gradient model has to remove afterwards, and the software measures that from the frames.

If you are shooting from home instead: most nights are not dark-site nights. See what to image from a light-polluted sky, how removing light-pollution gradients works on a stacked image, and what deep-sky stacking software for Mac, Windows and Linux does with a session from either kind of sky.