The Sark Dark Sky Almanac 2027
No street lighting. No cars. Just cloud, the moon and you. Every night of 2027, measured for Sark's own patch of sea, with a log to keep score of the nights you actually went out.
The sky as it is
Reading tonight's sky...
Twilight from SunriseSunset.io, cloud from Open-Meteo, both read live for Sark's coordinates. The 2027 almanac below is the planning tool; this is tonight.
How the island keeps this dark
Sark's Dark Sky status is not a plaque from 2011. The Sark Astronomy Society formed that same year, on the suggestion of one of the inspectors who assessed the island for the award, to promote the night sky it had just been recognised for. Founding members paid ten pounds each to join.
Jumble sales, quiz nights and dinners paid for a secondhand telescope within a couple of years. In September 2015 the society built the Sark Observatory itself, on one of the island's highest points near the church cemetery, giving it a permanent home. Ten years after the original award, Guernsey Post marked the anniversary with a set of six stamps of Sark's Dark Skies.
Sark reports to the International Dark-Sky Association every year, not a one off certificate from 2011: lighting compliance, sky brightness and outreach, filed and checked annually. Compliance has held at 75 percent since the original 2011 application, and brightness readings taken with a handheld meter have stayed in genuinely dark territory across the decade, from 21.5 to 21.36 magnitudes per square arcsecond, higher numbers are darker. In 2018, a proposed development next to the observatory, eight yurts and an entertainment barn with party lighting, was withdrawn after islanders objected. Paul Fellows, the Cambridge astronomer whose donated telescope the observatory later named in his honour, wrote in his own observing notes that Sark's skies were darker than his own light polluted observatory back home.
The island's own reporting names April, May, September and October as its strongest months for dark sky tourism.
January
Ten hour nights and the Quadrantids on the 3rd, on a thin crescent moon. Wear everything you own.
February
Still deep winter dark. Orion owns the southern sky all month.
March
The equinox month. Darkness starts giving hours back to the day.
April
The Lyrids arrive with the last of the properly long nights.
May
Late twilight now. The Eta Aquariids reward anyone up before dawn.
June
The sun never drops far enough for true dark. One badge lives here anyway.
July
Real darkness creeps back in the last week. Summer鈥檚 price.
August
Two new moons this year. The month ends with five superb nights in a row.
September
The Milky Way core sits over the sea after dusk. Prime season.
October
The Orionids, longer nights, and the first 8 hour dark of autumn.
November
The Leonids and honest winter darkness. Bring a flask.
December
A full moon drowns the Geminids on the 14th this year, but the Ursids on the 22nd fall on a near new moon. December鈥檚 real show.
The nights you kept
Been out? Log the night. There are thirteen badges, one for every kind of night the island gives. Saved on this device, judged only by you.
Open a month and log a night to begin.
Computed night by night for 49.43 N, 2.36 W. Sark has held International Dark Sky status since 2011. Times are local Sark time. Weather is its own lottery.
