Every Saturday night, the dome opens.
A volunteer-run observatory on the moor above Todmorden — 339 metres up, on a level plateau ringed by low hills that keep the glare of the valley towns out of your eyes.
Bring nothing but warm clothes.
Your first look
Turn up on a Saturday evening. Someone will be at the eyepiece and will point a telescope at whatever the sky is giving us that night — the rings of Saturn, a globular cluster, the craters strung along the terminator of the moon. No equipment, no experience, no astronomy required.
Somewhere properly dark
Members observe from the site itself, alongside the Centre's own instruments. The plateau is level, the horizon is low in every direction, and the ring of hills takes the worst of the light from the towns in the valleys below.
Schools and groups
The Centre has worked with schools, scout groups and community organisations since the 1980s. Group visits are arranged directly with the volunteers who will run them, so you get a night built around what your group came to see.
Ordered by aperture, because on a clear night that is the order everybody asks about them in.
- Open-truss Newtonian 30″ / 760 mm
- Newtonian 17″ / 430 mm
- Also permanently mounted 20″ · 16″ · 12″ · 8″
- Separate telescope mountings on site 14
- Mirror blank still waiting for a home 42.6″ / 1,080 mm
- Main dome, opened April 2000 29 ft / 8.8 m
There are also cameras obscura on the site, and equipment for solar, infrared and radio astronomy — so there is something to do in daylight and something to do under cloud.
Dress for a moor, not for a car park
You will be standing still, outdoors, 339 metres up, for a couple of hours after dark. It is reliably colder than the valley you drove out of. Wear more than you think you need, and then one more layer than that.
Bring a red torch if you have one
White light destroys the dark adaptation that takes about twenty minutes to build and one glance to lose — which is why everything on the site runs under red light. If you haven't got a red torch, the Red light button at the top of this page turns this whole website red, and your phone with it.
Cloud happens
This is the Pennines. Some Saturdays the sky is closed for business, and that is part of the hobby rather than a failure of it. Check the forecast before you leave, and take the panel at the top of this page as a guide to what the sky could give you rather than a promise that it will.
Get a key to the dark
Membership supports a Centre that has been run entirely by volunteers since 1982, and opens up the members' area of this site: observing notes, what is worth pointing at this month, and news of events before they are announced anywhere else.