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Gary Fildes was born in Sunderland. A former bricklayer, he is the founder and lead astronomer of Kielder Observatory. Among the world’s best sites for stargazing, it receives over 20,000 visitors a year, with its mission to educate, inspire and enthuse the public. In 2012 Gary was given an honorary master’s degree from Durham University in recognition of his services to astronomy. He is currently leading a multimillion-pound fundraising drive to make Kielder the world’s biggest public observatory.

About the Book

Gary Fildes left school at sixteen, got a trade like most of his mates and was soon married with four kids. His life seemed set. But he had a secret. Something he only practised late at night with a few like-minded friends. Then one day, middle age approaching alarmingly, he acted on his lifelong passion. He finally came out. As an astronomer.

Today, Gary is the founder and lead astronomer of Kielder Observatory, one of the top ten stargazing sites in the world, which he also helped to build. Situated in the beautiful forests of Kielder, Northumberland, within Europe’s largest protected dark sky park, it offers some of the UK’s most spectacular views of stars, planets and galaxies.

An Astronomer’s Tale is Gary’s inspirational story: part memoir, part nature writing, part seasonal guide to the night sky. It is a book brimming with passion; and at a time when the world is captivated by space, it will leave you ready to get out there and explore the wonders of the skies for yourself.

An Astronomer’s Tale

Gary Fildes

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Gary Fildes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
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Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Dedicated to the working people of the North-East: the builders and the plumbers, the nurses and the soldiers, the mams and the dads. If you once dreamed of space, of being able to fly to the moon, dare to dream again.

Author’s Note

AS WELL AS chronicling my life story in astronomy, this book offers seasonal bi-monthly stargazing guides to the constellations, which include star charts. Structured into alternate chapters between the autobiographical narrative, these bi-monthly night-sky chapters can be read in or out of sequence, and each one spans four constellations that can be observed in the northern hemisphere, as well as one other celestial object.

Below is a key to these bi-monthly night-sky sections. Elsewhere in the book, in the autobiographical narrative, I will also discuss other celestial objects and practical tips about astronomy.

For additional information, at the back of the book is an ‘Annotated Glossary’ and a brief ‘Note on Equipment’. To get the most out of the night-sky sections, I recommend that newcomers to astronomy turn to the glossary before they begin the book, as it explains concepts such as ‘magnitude’ and describes some of the terminology that I use in the book. There is also a ‘List of Constellations’ and a short section titled ‘Where Can I Get More Help?’, which suggests other learning resources.

KEY

Preface

IT IS 5.45 P.M. and I get in my car and leave home as usual. I always enjoy this hour-long drive away from the urban sprawl of Newcastle, away from the houses and the busyness of the city. A calming silence descends on me as the car’s headlights shine out in front, guiding me along the empty country lanes. I join the A68, or the ‘Military Road’, a reminder of times long gone: it was originally laid by the Roman army and used as a passage between York and Scotland. I trace the winding route as it cuts through Hadrian’s Wall, dissecting vast cornfields, and continues up and over ancient hills. Stretching out far in front, the hedge-lined road leads me unerringly north. I open the driver’s window slightly and feel the air. It’s fresh and cold and fast. As I bound over the crest of another hill, the front wheels briefly clear the ground. On the descent I get the first glimpse of open countryside.

It is bursting with life. A pair of deer pauses fleetingly; pheasants totter by dangerously close to the roadside. The fields to my left are populated with tiny low-lying clouds of white wool; the lambs are appearing. A few spring and trot alongside the hedges until they spot the car and race off to Mam and the safety of her back. Soon pine trees surround me. The Sitka spruces are tall and grand and line the road like sentinels. They signify something special for me. Dark-Sky Guardians, as I like to think of them. I have been transported to the plains of Scandinavia. Gently rounding another corner, I see water like glass off to my right. The lake is vast. I marvel that it is man-made and built in the heart of Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Apparently it is the largest in Europe. An osprey soars high above and in the distance I can just make out what appears to be a flock of birds flying off towards the approaching night. It is already getting dark as I strain my eyes through the windscreen to see the first stars appearing from the twilight. Only the hum of the car’s engine reminds me that I have work to do, that I have a group of visitors waiting.

It’s just past 6.45 p.m. when I slam the door and walk along the sandy gravel path. I’m buoyed up by the latest weather forecast, suggesting it will be a clear evening. The air is crisp and I take another big lungful as I habitually raise my head skywards. Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, gently growls at me, shining brightest. Radiating out from within the constellation is an asterism in the familiar shape of a cooking utensil. Her body and tail constitute the ‘pan and its handle’, seven stars that resemble a dot-to-dot of what you would find on your kitchen cooker. I can see the bright blue hue of Alcor and Mizar, two distant energetic balls of hot rarefied gas that form a part of the handle of the ‘pan’, held together by gravity. My eye then finds two stars in the head of the pan, Merak and Dubhe. They are important: they point the way to Polaris, the North Star, the position in the sky that represents our planet’s rotational axis. As you might guess, it also points directly north, so if you get lost at night, knowing its position could save your life. I watch as Merak and Dubhe twinkle gentle hues of yellow and amber and then blue again as our atmosphere distorts the faint light from these distant suns. I know the constellation that contains this asterism, or pattern of stars, well; it’s familiar and I feel welcomed, as if receiving a respectful nod from across the room by an old friend. Even if that friend is a bear.

The sky is changing again now as darkness falls faster and the Sun sets over the horizon. I can see the bright glare from Venus as it reflects the day’s remaining sunlight through its thick, cloudy atmosphere of carbon dioxide. It is so bright an array of colours dances in the golden light of the sunset. Above is Jupiter, shining softly and not as brightly. At over 350 million miles away, this behemoth of a planet, the largest in our solar system, follows Venus effortlessly down towards the horizon. But it is now nearly 7 p.m.; I really have to get to work.

As I approach the observatory, the inky black sky stretching out around it, I hear in the background the comforting whirl of the wind turbine which powers our observatory and array of telescopes. The timber structure is perfectly silhouetted against Deadwater Fell in the east with a distant listening post for the RAF perched on its summit. The two square observatory turrets that house the telescopes rise proudly from the base of the building, separated by the observation deck used to stare up into the cosmos. In some ways, the observatory resembles a futuristic ship sailing out into the universe, with its minimalist shapes and clean corners dominating the surroundings. The larch cladding, which protects the telescopes residing in the turrets, is standing and fixed vertically, nailed into a defensive poise.

The guests are already there, sitting down and snuggling up on the two-person Moon chairs out on the deck under the stars. I can hear their excited chatter. A faint glow of red light is visible, shining up from our ‘dark-sky’-sensitive light bulbs. This strange scarlet light preserves the visitor’s now dark-adapted vision. The volunteers are animated. I can see Austin pointing at the sky, looking up eagerly. His head and neck are pushed to the extreme as he strains to see distant objects. Forget health and safety, I get a little gush of happiness as I realise that creaking necks are ignored and regarded as part of the job.

Tonight we are holding an event aimed at hunting out deep-sky objects like galaxies and star clusters that lie at huge cosmological distances from Earth. People flock to the observatory for many reasons, perhaps to see something rare or unexpected, such as the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, which regularly dance in reds and greens in our northerly skies. Others come to get a glimpse of something bigger, to feel their own insignificance. Set in the vastness of space, guests often say, they feel small – but to me we are all significant. Tonight we hope to see everything, observing through our telescopes vast metropolises of stars and clouds of glowing gas. What we cannot see we debate and discuss.

At approximately 7.45 p.m. I welcome the forty guests inside the observatory. The small rectangular room we call the classroom can only hold forty people at a squeeze and tonight we are, as usual, at maximum capacity. In the corner the log-burning stove is keeping us warm and glowing amber. The indoor red dark-sky lights create an atmosphere of secrecy, as if we are all children hiding beneath a duvet cover. On the screen I’m showing pictures in high resolution of astronomical objects, many taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, others taken here at Kielder. I give a brief welcome and cover the usual ground rules, as well as pointing out the way to our composting loo. I talk about what we hope to see in the coming hours, especially the distant galaxies – those huge, often seemingly swirling patterns of billions of stars that lie so far away that the light they emit takes millions of years to travel to us. I talk in particular of a galaxy called the Whirlpool that lies around 22 million light years away. For effect I emphasise that the light from the Whirlpool galaxy has to cover 186,282 miles every second (the speed of light) for 22 million years, before we can even see it.

I lead the group outside to stand on the observation deck. I ask if anyone can see a faint fuzzy patch in the sky, due north. One guest spots it and then another. It is the Andromeda galaxy, a distance of 2.2 million light years away. It’s the most distant object in the northern skies that any human being can observe without a telescope. I pick out with my laser pen some of the constellations that adorn our surroundings. In Greek mythology, Perseus was the first hero, the son of Zeus who became immortal after his death. Like the myth, Perseus the constellation harbours a favourite object, the variable star Mira, which pulsates over time. Climbing higher into the sky, I point out the Milky Way, our home galaxy. It steals the show, distinguished with knots of obscuring dust lanes meandering through its star fields.

There are a few gasps; our view looks quite different from the perspective of the sky you see from most cities. Due to light pollution in urban areas, on most clear nights you can see a maximum of thirty stars. But nestled within the Kielder Forest, away from any nearby metropolis, the observatory sits under the darkest skies in Britain. It is the third largest area of protected dark skies in the world, and with great darkness comes great clarity: thousands upon thousands of stars can be seen. They seem to reach out into eternity, as if a divine artist had painted them.

I explain to the group that there are many hypotheses about the naming of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The ancient Ionians theorised that it was milk spewing from the breast of Queen Cassiopeia, a beauty whose vanity led to her downfall. Others believe in stories of fireflies and godly artistry. Scientifically, of course, the naming of our galaxy doesn’t matter, but we associate so much meaning with a name and it fuels our questions. What is the Milky Way? Why do we see it the way we do? If it is overhead in the sky, how can we say that we, on Earth, are inside it? What about the stars we can see to the left and to the right which clearly aren’t inside the Milky Way, or are they? It all seems very confusing.

I say to the group, which ranges from children to pensioners – all united in their curiosity – that I like to think of galaxies as cities of stars. In the same way that people live in cities, stars live in galaxies. However, there is no city on our planet that possesses a similar number of people to the number of stars in a galaxy. Anywhere between 100 billion and 300 billion stars reside in the flat spiral disc we call our Milky Way galaxy. And of course each ‘star’ is a sun like our own.

I ask everyone to imagine that we have a big circular disc like a Frisbee lying in front of us on the ground. On it we should paint the stars and swirling patterns. This is what a telescope does: observes a distant galaxy from the outside. Next, I ask all the guests to change things around and get inside the pretend galaxy. We can start by cutting out the centre and standing in the middle of it, so it surrounds our feet. Then, by lifting up the galaxy, like a hula hoop, it gets higher and higher, closer and closer to our eyes. We still see it as a spiral, until the one magic moment when we lift the pretend galaxy up to eye level. What do we see? No longer is it a spiral circular shape at all, but a thin ring of Frisbee. Now we are in the galaxy. It is the same when we look up from the observatory and see precisely what any person who has ever looked up at the Milky Way witnesses: our galaxy appears as a thin band across the sky. Why? Because we are inside it.

Follow-up questions about the celestial Frisbee rightly come thick and fast from the group – it has taken me decades to get my own head around the concept. But just as I start to explain again, I notice a few fingers take to the air in a different direction. A lady standing close by me suddenly shrieks. ‘Oh! Look at that aircraft coming towards us.’ I turn my head in the direction of the voice, and I can see it now too. I don’t have to strain into the darkness; I can see what appear to be bright landing lights. The group instinctively huddles together on the observation deck, guarded either side by the two turrets. Some people are nervous, but I still hear the sound of Moon chairs scraping across the deck as some visitors try to get the best vantage point possible. It is 9.30 p.m. now and the sky is as dark as it will get, at least until the Moon sets later. Thousands of stars shine down on us, and even several satellites that can be seen with the naked eye are spinning across the sky. But we are transfixed by what appears to be an aircraft. Seconds later it seems to be moving slowly or hovering, we can’t quite tell. More seconds elapse and the group becomes ever more attentive. This is no aircraft. As the object seemingly hurtles towards us, its colour brightens. The gasps and cheers grow louder; it is by now easily the brightest thing in the sky, even outshining the Moon.

‘Oh my God! Is it going to hit us?’ The unidentified flying object silently fizzes amber to green, so bright and colourful, then blue, then amber again. By this time fifteen seconds have passed since the initial observation. People are snatching at their bags to get at cameras. I fall silent. It began in the south-east, and now it is due south. Looking at it square on, we can see it has developed a tail trailing behind it. It, too, burns and fizzles more colours, as forces begin to burn its surface to a crisp. In a flash it is now in the south-west and we can see debris falling from the tail. ‘Keep watching!’ I yell. It fades gradually, as gas and more debris fall like amber fairies diving down towards the Earth. We are all amazed, and then it is gone.

It lasted for twenty-five seconds from first sighting. Research later suggested that the object, a bolide meteor the size of a bus, had entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Belgium and progressed through, burning up over the Atlantic Ocean. Observers from Europe and Ireland also reported sightings of this extremely bright meteor before it disappeared.

Asteroids like this can be leftovers from the formation of our solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. Normally they are held in a stable gravitational orbit around our home star, the Sun, tucked safely in a region called the asteroid belt in between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. However, a collision in space or a little nudge in this region can change that stable orbit and send these objects hurtling towards us. These objects can be travelling between 11 and 70km per second and weigh thousands of tonnes. With such huge energy of motion, or kinetic energy, they pose huge risks to us on Earth.

This one, however, wasn’t dangerous. But neither was it predicted or logged or tracked – we knew nothing of its arrival. Once it interacted with our dense atmosphere, its fate was sealed. Frictional forces converted its kinetic energy to heat and light, and we saw the process unravel before our eyes. At such great temperatures, sometimes 3,000–4,000 degrees, the object is changed forever. Some pieces may land on Earth and be found as meteorites; most are burnt away by our protective atmosphere. What we saw was an everyday occurrence on Earth since the dawn of time. The way our planet is peppered by rocks from space may even have seeded the building blocks for life on Earth in the distant past. But for tonight we are content to look and marvel at the spectacle. No Ph.D.s in physics are needed, nor an expensive education: we simply look and enjoy Mother Nature reminding us who is boss.

I walk back into the classroom and to the log-burning stove, where a group of children are enthusiastically describing what they have seen. Before we resume the night’s stargazing, a thought flashes through my mind. For twenty-five years I was a bricklayer working on building sites, lost but searching for something. It feels good to be home at last.

INTRODUCTION

How to Build an Observatory

It is April 2000 and another day at work on the building site. Terry laughs out loud. He must think I’m a bit brazen. The bricks in question belong to our employer Bellway Homes, a developer operating across the north-east of England. Terry is an estimator, part of the technical team that costs up the price of making a building. I am a bricklayer. We get on well, particularly as he is also an amateur stargazer himself, so I know I am playing to a home crowd.

I explain that the planned observatory is the dream-child of the Sunderland Astronomical Society, or the SAS as we call ourselves. Our motto is ‘Who Stares Wins’. I’ve been a member for three years, meeting every Sunday in one of the upper rooms we rent in the large Victorian terraced house on the seafront owned by the Quakers. I was first invited along by my next-door neighbour Dickie, who was already part of the group. One weekend, he discovered from my son that I was hiding a huge passion for the stars.

‘Dad, Dad!’ my son Graham shouted excitedly as he ran into our house. ‘The bloke whose car I’ve just washed has an LX200, the same one you’ve been looking at in the magazines!’

‘What?’ I pulled back the curtain to look in the direction of Dickie’s house. ‘He has an LX200? Are you sure?’

I was flabbergasted as my son ran back to tell Dickie that his dad had a telescope too. That was it. Dickie and I became fast friends and he welcomed me into the fold. I immediately knew the group were my kind of people. The chair, Don Simpson, would usually lead the evening’s proceedings. Don was tall and thin and could usually be seen modelling his USS Nimitz baseball cap, tight jeans and a pair of storm-trooper black boots. He would sit at the front of the room with the committee members either side of him and roll a fag. With the filter in his mouth, staring at his rolling handiwork, he would utter, ‘I change me arn oil ’n drink me beer outta cans; there’s nee public school ties in here.’ We were a tight-knit crowd of fifteen or so: nerdy, diverse and utterly engrossed in astronomy. From planning group trips or talks for the general public to sharing advice about telescopes or photography, our gatherings were the highlight of my week. I would look forward to them whilst working on the building site during the day, and dream of a clear night in the forests so that we could go off together with our scopes. Because I liked him so much, and he lived opposite me, I would pester Dickie relentlessly, until he later admitted that, whenever there was a clear night, if the phone rang, he would say to Anita, his wife, ‘It’ll be Gary.’ But secretly I knew he loved it and he couldn’t wait to get out there either.

For the society, this would be our very first observatory. Our plan was to build something small but permanent, which we could use to deliver stargazing experiences to the general public. The building itself would only house a single telescope through the roof, and only three to four people at a time could fit inside. But it would certainly be a little drier and warmer than the observation nights I had been giving to the public for the last year outside Kielder Castle, which could be sub-zero. The new observatory would be open to the whole community, inviting people of all ages to come and try the stars for themselves. Its size was partly dictated by the dimensions of a white fibreglass observatory dome that had been donated. Three metres in diameter, it resembled a builder’s hat, and once we had scrubbed off a layer of green algae, it was fit for purpose. Now it just needed a brick structure to sit upon, and a concrete base. Thanks to my job, I was uniquely qualified to volunteer my services.

Someone once told me that if you don’t build your own dream, someone else will probably hire you to build theirs. For over two decades I had very literally been doing the latter, but I was proud of it. Life as a bricklayer was exciting at first. Mastering the trowel wasn’t easy, and it took a lot of practice to mimic the more experienced hands. You needed to get the right amount of mortar, or ‘muck’ as it was known, on your trowel, before spreading it just thickly enough so that when you placed your brick down a little muck would squeeze out of the bed and you could scrape it off. If you did this correctly, the brick would be airtight and would bond with the muck. There was an immense feeling of satisfaction in the repetition, and an even greater sense of well-being many bricks later when I had finally learned the craft. The building site itself was also an enjoyable environment, full of my kind of people, the same lads I had grown up with on the council estate in Grindon village. Most of us were young and fit and strong, and we could take the physical punishment. I got to know Shaun Stokoe, a friend of my older brother, particularly well. He was one of the hardest workers and the best hod carrier I’ve ever known; he had the key job of carrying bricks around the site. One hod, or hoddie, would normally support two of us brickies as we built a wall. The hod Shaun used was a three-sided metal box attached to a long shaft. It could be filled with around fourteen bricks, which could weigh close to 40 kg when full. He would hold the hod shaft with one hand as he loaded up with bricks using the other, before slinging the box on his shoulder and lugging it to where I or another brickie was working. Shaun is still doing this job to this day.

The two of us were a well-matched team and soon we were scouting around sites to see who was paying the best wages. The summers were the best. In the late 1980s and early 1990s it wasn’t unusual for us to be working onsite with a group of other lads, everyone in just a pair of Speedos and a set of steel-toed boots. What a vision. Bare-backed and bare-chested we would toil all day in the sun, returning home to our family sunburnt and worked out. Winters were not as pleasant. One year we were doing contract work for Barratt Homes. We were self-employed at the time, which was better for the money, but if you didn’t work you didn’t get paid – even if it was freezing cold. With four kids now to provide for, and nearing Christmas, the pressure to earn was intense. I bundled up warmly every day to fight the biting winds, but that didn’t solve the problem of the ice-cold bricks. Bricks have a knack of getting wet, and can absorb enough water to nearly double in weight. As they’re rough to the touch, the tips of my fingers were already skinless after laying hundreds of them per day. One morning I went to pick one up. It was hard and cold and so I grabbed it more vigorously than usual. When it didn’t budge, I hit it with my hammer and up it came. But there it stayed; I couldn’t get it off. The water had frozen my lukewarm fingers to the brick’s surface. I shook my hand, which only made matters worse as it was too heavy for that. Eventually I tore my fingers away with my other hand, and off came the skin; or rather it remained attached to the brick. In exquisite pain, I screamed up into the grey hanging sky, heart pounding, and I remember thinking, get used to it, you are here to stay.

I was back on the site again the next day, and the day after. Without brickies and this army of workers who endure these conditions all year long, we would have no homes to live in. I knew this and felt proud to be doing the work. But internally I felt numb and the dream of astronomy from my youth was a distant memory. What I was doing now I would be doing until I could do it no longer. As I grew older, things got tougher each year. Backache is probably the worst part of the job. After a shift I would need to lie down on the floor at home and the kids would stand in the small of my back, to ease the pain and stretch me out. Afterwards I would gingerly lower myself into a hot bath.

I had tried everything to get out: selling insurance, selling fish, even making applications to the police. But I could never find an escape. Although the winters could be hard, few jobs around Sunderland could match the money. As well as the physical toll, the thought preyed on my mind that somehow this life wasn’t for me. I had internalised my passion for astronomy since I was a child; around most of the lads at work I was Gaz the lad, Gaz the Sunderland football fan. Most had no idea that by day I was trowelling, and by night I was reading physics books. The new observatory finally presented me with an opportunity. How strange that one craft was steering me towards another. Towards a life that had been my passion all along.

Back on the Bellway Homes building site, Terry was sold on my request for free materials, partly because of the good PR I promised it would reflect back on the company. And it worked – they generously donated the lot, from bricks and mortar to concrete. The foundations were eventually dug out and the concrete arrived. Reinforcement was put in and we filled the trench with the concrete. I will never forget the sight of the new observatory that first morning, with the tubs of ready-mixed mortar standing close by, a blue tarpaulin covering the other essential materials. Yes, it was a familiar sight to me – it looked like a building site – but this one was different, it really mattered to me. Work was about to start as I stood excitedly with a can of yellow spray paint and my tape measure, preparing to mark out the building line. Building walls isn’t easy, especially when it is a radius wall, as we say in the trade, meaning it’s a curved full circle. To achieve this you need precision, and your tools: a good trowel from which you can evenly spread your mortar, and a very accurate spirit level. ‘Setting out’, as it’s called, is probably the most integral part of the process because once the ‘line’ is set, there is no going back on the dimensions. I started off by measuring from the centre of the floor to my outside wall. We had decided that the ring on which the 3-metre dome would sit and rotate would be positioned on the inner wall; this way we could maximise space inside the observatory. The wall would be 100mm deep, the width of the cavity would be 75mm, and the width of the outer leaf of bricks was also 100mm. Some simple maths later and we had discerned that the radius measurement, which was half of the floor, was 1.775 metres to the edge of the outer wall. I kept measuring from that central point and had soon spray-painted my circular base.

The bricks we were using were predominantly russet brown, smooth to the touch and each one around 225mm long, as old bricks were in the UK. However, there was our first problem. To construct a perfect circle of our size with rigid lumps of clay as hard as iron and 225mm long would not work. We needed the wall to curve smoothly, and with the bricks being the size they were, their long lengths would be too large for the radius. A better option would be to use smaller bricks, but how when we only had the pile we had begged? The solution was to cut them – every single one of them straight in half. For the next few weeks a very understanding friend, Mick McLaughlin, also a brickie, set about helping me snap each brick. We were still doing our normal jobs, so we would usually arrive in the evenings from our other sites. Of course, snapping a brick isn’t like snapping a biscuit. It’s more like hitting it precisely with a hammer. A brick hammer is a special tool and not like the everyday hammer you would use to knock in a nail. It is around the same size but is very strong and made of cast steel with a thick plastic handle. The first thing you realise when you use it is that it is very well balanced. It has to be, so that when you swing, it connects well and all of the weight and momentum is transferred into breaking the brick. It has one flat end and then tapers to an edge, which directs the force onto the brick. If you strike it cleanly, then you can expect a snapped brick in one go; sometimes it takes two attempts. A loud crack and a jolt up your arm usually signifies a successful hit. But like most bricklaying it is a skill that takes time to perfect; it had taken me at least a year or two to master the brick hammer when I was an apprentice. Thankfully, the muscle memory was still there, and a few weeks later each observatory brick was separated into two perfect little halves. We began to lay the wall and the smooth circle quickly took shape. Now we could play with the design.

I wanted to represent some of the major constellations in the pattern of the bricks. Fortunately we had been given a small assortment of yellow bricks, so once we had cut these too, we decided that each bright star in our design was to be represented by a yellow half brick, standing out from the russet-brown ‘space’ of the others. The first and most important constellation to design was Cygnus. Cygnus the Swan is a favourite among stargazers in the northern hemisphere. Sitting inside the plane of the Milky Way, it is found in the brightest region of our galaxy and is relatively easy to recognise due to the positions of its most brilliant stars, which together form the crossed shape of the royal bird of its namesake (its shape also gives rise to its other nickname, the Northern Cross). Cygnus’ most brilliant star of all is Deneb, a blue-white supergiant 200,000 times more luminous than our own Sun, but over 2,000 light years from Earth. Deneb, located in the left-hand side of the constellation, forms the tail of the swan in flight. The star that forms the head is called Albireo or the ‘beak star’. This appears to be one star but is in fact two: a small telescope would resolve two distinct points of light, one of which is vivid orange and the other bright blue. Track back from Albireo to Deneb and you will encounter the star Gamma Cygni, which marks the centre of the swan’s back. From there, you can trace left and right out to the tips of the swan’s wings. When I observe Cygnus I always think of a white swan flying through the star fields of the Milky Way.

We had decided to name our building the Cygnus Observatory because it was to be located in the grounds of the Washington Wetlands Centre, on the outskirts of Sunderland. Although located in an urban environment, not a dark-sky site, the bird sanctuary was still a good location for our first observatory, situated as it is in a relatively serene area away from lamp posts or other housing lights. Its wooden buildings are topped with moss-covered roofs and surrounded by gently sloping banks and grassed areas. A small lake marks the centre of the grounds, and birds fly overhead continually; Canada geese add a splash of colour, competing with the population of pink flamingos. The centre is perhaps most well known for its swans, though, so our observatory would always be called ‘Cygnus’ and the brickwork seemed a suitable gesture. We had yellow bricks spare so we could design Orion too, as well as other constellations.

Over the remaining summer months the observatory took shape. I was so proud to see the dome fitted, affirming the building’s presence on the landscape. We painted its fibreglass shell and it shone brilliant white. As six months on the project came around, and the warm summer evenings came to a close, the final part of the build was of course the most important: the installation of the telescope. The scope that had been donated by Durham University was a 14-inch Newtonian Cassegrain focus. It is a popular design, and the name comes from the famous British physicist Sir Isaac Newton and an engineer who revolutionised the optical system. Laurent Cassegrain, who was a French Catholic priest, published the first notable design for a reflecting telescope in 1672.

We agreed to put our precious new telescope on a concrete pier that would stand in the centre of the observatory. The day it was installed, we were tired but overjoyed. With this powerful tool we could comfortably observe the planets and bright deep-sky objects. A few weeks later, on 2 October 2002, the Cygnus Observatory was officially opened to the public. The ribbon was cut by Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale, a noted British astronomer who served as the Astronomer Royal in the early 1990s, and who is now Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics at Durham University (Sir Arnold would go on to become a friend and a mentor, eventually the man to bestow upon me an Honorary Master’s degree in Astrophysics from Durham years later). But it wasn’t the decorum of the opening that was the greatest source of my pleasure. It was that something so special had come from a place of such passion among my friends, and from such humble means.

Now, nearly fifteen years later, I have been fortunate to help build another observatory – the Kielder Observatory. Cygnus got me started in astronomy and taught me the art of the possible. Kielder has transformed my life.

When you mention the word ‘observatory’, what springs to mind? A clinical building perhaps, with a white hemispherical dome. Inside, it is probably cold and dark and full of complicated equipment. Only the glow of a computer screen illuminates the hypnotised face of the pale creature peering into the telescope. An astronomer. A geek.

	Naked-eye, or unaided-eye stargazing
	Deep-sky objects that require a pair of binoculars or telescope

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