A derelict factory, and what became of it.
In November 1982, Peter Drew, Linda Simonian and Rob Miller began building an observatory on an abandoned factory site high on the moors between Todmorden and Bacup. It has been run by volunteers ever since.
The Centre stands at 339 metres — 1,112 feet — on the Southern Pennines, close to the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire. What makes the site work is not simply the altitude. It is a level plateau surrounded by a ring of low hills, and those hills do the one thing an observatory near a populated valley most needs: they put the towns below the horizon, and their light with them.
Satellite measurements of night-time brightness put the site in the semi-rural class. That is an honest description rather than a boast. This is not the Atacama, and nobody here pretends it is. It is, however, genuinely dark ground within half an hour of several hundred thousand people, which is a rarer thing than it sounds.
The building
The main tower was completed in April 2000: a round building 29 feet across, capped with an aluminium dome that opens through twin sliding shutters, each three feet wide. By the end of 2015 the site carried fourteen separate telescope mountings — a number that tells you more about how the Centre has grown than any single instrument could.
Dated because the order matters: everything here was built on top of what came before it, by the people who turned up.
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1982
Three people and a disused factory
Peter Drew, Linda Simonian and Rob Miller found the Centre in November, on a derelict industrial site on the moor.
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2000
The dome
The main observatory tower is completed in April — a 29-foot round building under an aluminium dome with twin three-foot shutters.
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2015
Fourteen mountings
By the end of the year the site carries fourteen separate telescope mountings, the largest a 30-inch open-truss Newtonian.
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Now
Open every Saturday
Weekly open evenings, solar viewing through the summer afternoons, and work with schools and community groups across the two counties.
Visual observing is the front door, but it is not the whole building. Alongside the telescopes the Centre runs equipment for solar, infrared and radio astronomy, and keeps several cameras obscura — which means there is something worth seeing in daylight, and something worth doing when the cloud comes in.
A 42.6-inch mirror blank sits on site, unfigured and on hold. If it is ever completed it will be one of the largest amateur telescopes in the country. That project has waited a long time, and it is exactly the sort of thing that gets finished by volunteers rather than budgets.
Who runs it
Everyone. The Centre has no paid staff. The people who open the dome on a Saturday evening, talk a nervous eight-year-old through their first look at Jupiter, and lock up at one in the morning are members who chose to be there.
Members and keyholders. Members observe from the site with their own equipment as well as the Centre's, and experienced members can hold keys for access outside the public evenings. If that is what you are after, create an account and talk to us on a Saturday.
The Centre is on Bacup Road — the A681 — on the moor between Todmorden and Bacup, postcode OL14 7HP. The entrance is easy to drive past in the dark. The what3words address flattens.serves.blazing will put you at the site rather than somewhere along the road.
Public evenings run every Saturday from 7.30pm, through the year. In June, July and August the site also opens on afternoons from 3pm to 6pm, except Sundays, for solar observing.
Admission, parking and contact details are being confirmed with the Centre and will be published here. Until then, please check before travelling.