An observatory’s first year of operation has “put it on the map with stargazers”, bosses say.
Grizedale Observatory, at Ambleside, Cumbria, opened last May with the aim of giving north-west England a facility to match those elsewhere in the UK.
Along with its every day offering of telescopes and a planetarium, it has staged a dark skies festival and a number of other events.
Executive director Gary Fildes described its setting within a Lake District forest as providing an ideal spot from which to enjoy “the irresistible sight of the Milky Way and galaxies light years away”.