In June, I had a chance to visit The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial, an exhibition currently on at London’s Saatchi Gallery. I went with new friends I made during the IAU’s biennial Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) conference – Dorian, who works for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, and Anne, who works at the Square Kilometre Array radio observatory at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire (aside: Jodrell Bank is currently under threat after the UK government pulled £2.8 million of its funding recently; read more here).

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Occupying two floors and nine major gallery spaces, the exhibition presents artworks, installations and archival material exploring how the Sun and the Moon have shaped art, science, belief and imagination across cultures and over centuries. It incorporates an astonishing number of works. It was a hot day and I assumed, wrongly, that 90 minutes would be sufficient to see it all, but in the end, we were rushed to our meal, and I wished I’d had at least 3 hours.

In a press release, Saatchi Gallery’s director Paul Foster said that the exhibition reflects on objects in the sky that we too often take for granted but which represent amazing and beautiful essentials to all life on Earth.

“Artists working today are as influenced and inspired by these bodies as those who have created works throughout human history,” he said. “The exhibition is designed to be an uplifting celebration of the world and solar system in which we live.”

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The exhibition is so smartly curated. It is situated as a journey through a complete 24-hour cycle, moving from the first gallery – Dawn, which includes works exploring how early cultures rationalised the Sun and Moon as deities and cosmic forces, and includes works like the ancient Sol Invictus Celtic Bust and a faithful replica of the Nebra Sky Disc – to The Sun Rising, Zenith, Setting Sun, Evening, Walking on the Moon, Midnight and, finally, Darkest Hours. Each gallery reflects on a period of the day and explores different stories associated with the Sun and the Moon, through works that range from painting to moving images, textiles, photography, music and popular culture, exploring mythology, ritual, timekeeping, lunar exploration and spirituality.

Looming midway through is one of Luke Jerram’s now-famous giant celestial sculptures: Helios, a monumental six-metre sculpture of the Sun, which is animated with imagery of the Sun’s surface compiled from photographs by astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green and NASA observations, with guidance from solar scientist Professor Lucie Green from University College London. Sun loungers in the gallery invited you to sit and admire our star, and it was so hot that day that there was a real sense of being quite close to the surface of the Sun.

The final room was Massless Suns and Dark Suns and Massless Sun and Surface of the Sky – an illusion room filled with hanging balls of light and mirrors created by the teamLab collective. Designed to invite reflection on the nature of existence, this work was initially disorienting, as I felt suspended in space and wasn’t sure where the room's boundaries lay – the experience recalled one of Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms, which I saw at Tate Modern in 2024.

Altogether, an absolutely stunning and comprehensive look at how visions of the sky have shaped art and culture across locations and time periods, with works on loan from an impressive number of institutions. Well worth a visit (on a cool day) and give yourself at least 3 hours inside.

Practical information
The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial
Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London, SW3 4RY
saatchigallery.com
Tickets: £13
Until 8 September 2026

I keep thinking it’s August. At the end of March, when Nightfaring launched in North America, I was in Kansas City visiting my best friend and trying to work out whether the man there I’d been talking to for months would turn into the man I kept talking to for years. My mind and heart were open and uncertain.

On book launch day, I went to Chicago, to the Adler Planetarium – setting of the book’s final chapter, ‘Hope’ – and spoke to members of the public who wandered in before and after watching the Artemis II launch on a big screen in the museum’s canteen. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had felt like a few magical and uncertain dates in the few days and evenings before with Kansas City Man. I had a job to do, though, and so I smiled and met people and stood in front of an audience with the YOLO teens, who are the protagonists of the chapter, and did my job. I’ve gotten really good at double-tasking work and emotional avalanches.

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Starting on 3 April, my brain decided it was August and stayed there. I kept thinking I was so far ahead, that so much time had passed, that my pain and excitement and uncertainty about everything was just racing by.

Time was actually passing slowly.

It’s only June, I keep saying back to myself. Stop looking back at now from the future. You aren’t there yet, and nothing bad has happened. Time is passing slowly.

June is an impossible month. I suffer from the lesser-known but ridiculed summer seasonal affective disorder. While most people rejoice in long, languid days and a sun that never seems to set, it just makes me agitated. It’s hot. I can’t sleep. The UK has no infrastructure for heat – no air conditioning, no relief. Only a small desk fan that whispers puffs of hot air in my general direction while I sweat, wide awake, into another set of bedsheets.

In London, the sun doesn’t even get down to the horizon until 9:24 pm on the summer solstice. Because of our high northern latitude, the city does not experience true astronomical darkness for 57 days of the year from 23 May to 18 July. During that time, the sun doesn’t fall more than 18 degrees below the horizon, keeping the sky illuminated by lingering astronomical twilight throughout the night. Although it can feel somewhat dark to human eyes, there is still scattered sunlight in the sky all night long during this period. And then the sun reappears (nautical twilight) at 03:56 am like a toxic ex lurking on your Instagram stories. It just never goes away.

I’m a summer baby. I was born on the 28th of July. My star sign and rising sign are both in Leo. My Moon, too, is in the summer sign of Cancer, as are my Mars and Mercury. A northern-hemisphere summer is imprinted on my entire existence. And I want to enjoy it, I really do. But in the end, I just find the whole season insufferable.

Maybe it’s being born into a body with sensory processing problems. Where other people’s brains can turn off annoying sensations, such as scratchy, binding and chafing clothes or a bead of sweat slowly dripping down the length of one’s spine, my brain has no such off switch. Great at multitasking, and happy to let me know we are simultaneously hot, perspiring in very specific places, hearing loud music and tuning into an angry phone conversation nearby. And my train neighbour scrolling TikTok without headphones. And the itchy sensation of the train seat’s upholstery making strange indentations on the undersides of my thighs. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a sundress. Just the thought of the chafing.

For all my whingeing about summer, I love the changing of the seasons. I believe there is value in discomfort and both usefulness and beauty in diversity. Although I despise the current heatwave I’m living through, I also wouldn’t want to be presented with a life minus sunshine or a constant winter darkness. The ebb and flow of seasons, the cycles, the unknown and the understood together all make life somehow interesting and joyful. Martin Luther King Jr. is often quoted as having said, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” Maybe I need to flip it a little: Only after suffering through a heatwave can you appreciate the cool of autumn.

I don’t know what will happen with the man in Kansas City. I don’t know what my next book will be about. And I don’t know how I will survive this June.

But my travels and studies in darkness all these years have proven to me that, often, the experiences I don’t understand, enjoy or find easy, can bestow the greatest gifts.

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One last thing: if my essays have ever made you curious about experiencing true darkness for yourself, I’m leading a small group to Namibia in 2027 on what we’re calling the world’s first nocturnal conservation journey. We’ll spend our days on safari, exploring remarkable desert landscapes and spotting African wildlife, and our nights discovering why darkness itself is worth protecting. You can read more about the itinerary, or book your place, here: https://www.terrafaunajourneys.com/ourjournal/namibias-dark-skies-inside-one-of-the-worlds-last-great-dark-sky-frontiers

In the Tewa language, makowa means ‘sky’ or ‘heavens’. Tewa is an Indigenous language spoken by around 1600 people of the Ohkay Owingeh, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Tesuque, Nambé and Pojoaque Pueblo communities in what is now New Mexico. Makowa: The Worlds Above Us is the name of an exhibition on now at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, exploring and sharing Indigenous (mainly Puebloan) understandings of our connection to the stars, planets, cosmos, sky and air above us. While I was back in the U.S. in April, I had a chance to visit the museum. I always try to go, because the MIAC is an Indigenous-operated, curated and led museum that tells stories through Indigenous art and knowledge-holders. It is an incredibly important museum.

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Wall text at the entrance to Makowa says the exhibit invites you to “find your own ways to make sense of the worlds above us and hear stories of stargazers in NASA and Chaco Canyon’s Pueblo Bonito, learn about constellations and view artwork inspired by sky beings. What does the sky say to you in your own life?”

As you move through the exhibit, there are mixed media displays that introduce concepts of light and darkness, farming, the movement of the Sun, stars and planets, clouds and weather, eclipses, comets, spirit beings from the sky and rock art – particularly the spiral petroglyphs representing the Sun at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico. Paintings, pottery, weavings, jewellery and modern photographs all portray different aspects and Indigenous worldviews about the sky.

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In a press release, co-curator Marlon Magdalena (Jemez Pueblo) said, “This exhibition is about observation and connection. It’s a chance to see the sky through Indigenous eyes and recognise how our stories and sciences speak to one another.”

One immersive room is dedicated to Chaco Canyon (also a certified International Dark Sky Park since 2013). The documentary Looking To The Skies (Kaela Waldstein / Mountain Mover Media) loops interviews with Indigenous folks discussing their personal and cultural relationships to the sky, and an interactive display lets you explore the Rock of the Sun at Chaco at different times of day over a year to see how sunlight hits the spiral petroglyphs.

A display on farmer scientists includes a rain sash made in the 1940s. A rain sash is a knotted cotton scarf that dancers wear around the waist during sacred kachina dances and ceremonies. Kachinas are divine, ancestral spirit beings who represent the cosmos and natural world, acting as intermediaries between the physical and supernatural realms and often bringing rain and healing. The display explains Indigenous weather science, including understanding sky patterns and predictable annual cycles, as well as how lightning, storms and chemistry can affect soil health and crop cycles.

A particularly memorable display is a woven rug/wall hanging depicting the Moon landings by Diné (Navajo) artist Melissa Benaly, who made it for her children’s high school graduations in 2001.

Throughout the exhibit, I was reminded that the supposed tension between science and spirituality is a uniquely European/coloniser mindset, and for many Indigenous and Global Majority peoples around the world, these two concepts are interrelated and interdependent.

Science, spirit, belief, faith, myth, weather, nature and the divine are all inextricably bound up together as part of our existence in this realm and whatever is beyond it.

Practical information
Makowa: The Worlds Above Us
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
Museum Hill, Santa Fe, New Mexico
indianartsandculture.org
Until 17 August 2026

Travel with me to see dark skies in Namibia in 2027

Quick reminder that I’m co-leading the world’s first dark sky conservation trip to Namibia with TerraFauna Journeys. The trip will take place in February-March 2027 and includes stays in rooftop star beds, learning about the flora and wildlife of the Namib Desert, nighttime game drives to spot nocturnal wildlife, a visit to a big cat centre and classic safari experiences in Etosha National Park.

Booking: Namibia Safari Reimagined: Desert, Wildlife & Night Skies

More information:

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I’m delighted to announce that I will be co-leading a dark sky group tour to an incredible destination in Africa in 2027. I have partnered with the wonderful TerraFauna Journeys to create and co-lead the world’s first “Dark Sky Conservation” tour – an incredible journey to Namibia to see the night sky at NamibRand Nature Reserve, the first International Dark Sky Reserve on the African continent.

Through this partnership, I have become a TerraGuardian, the first of a group of stewards, local experts and scientists who ensure TerraFauna’s tours have impact and keep the wild, wild.

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Namibia Safari Reimagined: Desert, Wildlife & Night Skies

About Namibia and the tour

With its sweeping red deserts, Indigenous history, low light pollution and tremendously starry skies, Namibia stole my heart the moment I first visited last year. I am so excited to share it with the fortunate, small group of travellers who embark on this trip with us. The 15-day tour departs in April 2027, so there is plenty of time to prepare.

Though there are several existing stargazing group tours, this is the world’s first “Dark Sky Conservation” tour, which fully adheres to DarkSky International’s Principles of Responsible Astrotourism.

I personally helped build this itinerary with dark skies specifically in mind. So this is more than just basic stargazing and telescope sessions. This tour cares about light pollution. You will be staying in remarkable places: one lodge has rooftop star beds where you can sleep under the Milky Way to the calls of wild hyenas and barking zebras. At another, you will go behind-the-scenes to see how a desert resort manages to operate an entirely sustainable and circular economy while creating livelihoods for locals. We have endeavoured to partner with locations and lodges that practice good lighting and are taking sustainability credentials to the highest level.

I will lead regular evening sessions under the sky, but you will also get an exclusive chance to meet with the Warden of NamibRand Dark Sky Reserve to learn firsthand about the unique nocturnal flora and fauna of the area, and the extraordinary efforts that go into nighttime conservation in the reserve.

The itinerary will also include numerous nocturnal game drives to see how important darkness is as a living ecosystem. We will visit a leopard and cheetah conservation centre, and have a classic safari experience, with all the incredible wildlife that sub-Saharan Africa is known for, including rare mountain zebras, desert-adapted elephants and the only free-roaming endangered black rhino on the continent.

What makes this tour stand out from others is that we will dive deeply into how important the night is as a place, a habitat and an ecological condition for life. You will experience the night like never before, and of course, see the glittering skies over Namibia, untouched by light pollution.

More details & reserve a space

TerraFauna: an ecotourism champion

I chose to partner with TerraFauna Journeys because they align strongly with my values about responsible travel, regenerative practices, nature conservation and protection of our planet. TerraFauna’s mission is to inspire nature restoration through carefully stewarded journeys that restore the wild and transform travel into a powerful force for conservation.

From the moment I spoke with Ami Jones, the company’s founder, I knew that we had the same heart for this planet – a matching passion for nature and a desire to enable travellers to help restore our world in a tangible way.

All of TerraFauna’s tours collaborate directly with conservation scientists to amplify their impact and raise vital funds for their important ecology and wildlife projects. Through this partnership, we believe that travel is more than just exploration; it is a powerful way to reconnect with the land, care for wildlife and support local communities.

Find out more & book your space!

More information

Namibia Safari Reimagined: Desert, Wildlife & Night Skies
Departure date: April 2027 (exact dates TBC)
Duration: 15 days
Arrival city: Windhoek, Namibia
Number of spaces: 10 (going fast)

Special access for this tour

• Guided evening sessions about the night sky, light pollution and cultural astronomy with TerraGuardian Megan Eaves, editor at DarkSky International and author of Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness

• Special exclusive evening session with the NamibRand International Dark Sky Reserve’s Warden

• Nighttime game drives to see nocturnal wildlife

• A lodge stay with your own rooftop star bed

• A tour that fully complies with DarkSky’s Principles of Responsible Astrotourism

• Your money goes directly to support conservation efforts at the places we visit

Reserve a spot

In July of last year, a California-based aerospace startup called Reflect Orbital submitted an application for FCC approval to launch a sun-reflecting satellite. According to the application, the Earendil-1 satellite would be designed to reflect sunlight to a location on the ground using a motorized, thin-film reflector.

The aim? To “extend usable hours for solar cells to collect energy and provide illumination.” In other words, Reflect Orbital wants to reflect sunlight to Earth from space using a big mirror and sell it to solar farms and cities, where it would presumably be used as street lighting during nighttime hours. The company’s stated plan is to start with two satellites that can provide a few minutes of illumination as bright as the Moon and to expand to a huge constellation of satellites that could provide a target area of several square miles with light as bright as street lights, indoor office lights, and even full daylight for several hours.

When I first heard about the proposal, the idea of using a giant mirror to light up an entire city block with sunlight at night sounded completely absurd. But as a dark sky advocate, I know very well that when it comes to humans’ affinity for lighting up the night, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. And Reflect Orbital has already raised $8.7 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, the same venture capital firm that invested in Apple, Google, NVIDIA, SpaceX, and OpenAI.

I have spent the last five years researching the topic of light pollution and traveling to experience our rapidly vanishing nights for my new book, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness. My research took me from a national park in England to the high deserts of Uzbekistan, a Japanese tropical island, the uplands of New Zealand, and the jungles of Argentina. I even spent four days locked in a pitch-black room by myself at a monastery in Germany as part of a darkness retreat.

By traveling to experience darkness in many places on Earth, I’ve come to understand the night as its own specific place, one with rhythms and one that is alive with occupants and functions.

At night, whole systems come online that never appear in daylight — movements, signals, and ecological processes. And because it happens while most people are asleep, it rarely enters our awareness. Around 70% of all land animal species are nocturnal, and every living thing has evolved over 4.5 billion years based on Earth’s natural cycle of night and day, darkness and light. But humans are diurnal, or awake during the day, and we are prone to talk about the night as if it were nothing. Indeed, we often forget it exists altogether.

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What happens when we stop recognizing the night as a basic condition for life on this planet?

It’s strange how comfortable we’ve become erasing the night without ever asking what purpose it serves. If we can create “sunlight on demand” from space, why wouldn’t we? That question makes sense only in a society where night has already been stripped of meaning. We make plans for the night that work only if we assume it’s a void.

This logic did not start in orbit; it has been playing out on the ground for two centuries. The advent of incandescent light in the late 19th century opened new hours of work during the Industrial Revolution, when factory owners, driven by extraction, productivity, and profit, were able to light the work floor and employ night laborers for the first time.

Light pollution is increasing by 10% every year, and until now, almost all of the light that bleaches the night has come from ground-based sources, like street lamps, buildings, sports facilities, and industrial complexes. We are reclassifying the night from a place, an ecosystem, a habitat, and a shared prerequisite for life, into spare space, empty time, unused surface. A vacant lot available to optimize or exploit. A problem to be solved.

Reflect Orbital’s proposal matters not because it will immediately outshine cities, although its plans do involve eventually launching 50,000 of its own satellites that will beam down hours of sunlight as strong as indoor office lighting. The assumption that the night is just spare capacity already governs street lighting, architectural lighting, industrial lighting, digital advertising, and almost every facet of infrastructure. What Reflect Orbital is doing simply takes our current baseline to its logical extreme and shouts it from the sky: the night is something to fix, fill, abolish, optimize, or comodify.

I often think about how carelessly we talk about the night. English is filled with metaphors equating darkness and the night with bad things. “Dark days” are times of extreme misfortune. To be “kept in the dark” is to be given no information, and if one is “grasping in the dark,” they are lost and purposeless. A “dark cloud on the horizon” is a bad omen. The list goes on.

We have become so accustomed to flipping on a light switch that we no longer think of it as energy use. Sometimes, instead of light, I imagine water leaking out of every lightbulb I see. This image somehow makes the cost and scale of our light waste more comprehensible. We wouldn’t dream of leaving faucets running all night in office bathrooms or hoses flooding lawns for hours, but we are perfectly fine leaving lights on all night, because we don’t think of light as a resource, a carbon expenditure, or something that causes damage.

Through my travels and experiences in the dark, I’ve come to understand the night as something alive and teeming with important processes. Birds soar on the wing, wayfinding thousands of miles between continents by starlight. Moths flutter about, pollinating tomorrow’s tomatoes, raspberries, broccoli, and pumpkins. Insects burrow deep underground, recycling the soil so that new plants can grow. And our own human bodies use darkness to maintain a circadian rhythm, keeping our hormones and mental health balanced and our cardiovascular systems functioning.

I’ve also come to understand the night as somewhere with value on a philosophical and even spiritual level. It is the place for rest, regeneration, self-examination, and renewal. The time when our softness, compassion, and creativity flourish. A time for gentle conversations, laughter, lovemaking. Night is a distinct location with a starry sky that has inspired songs, poetry, paintings, and literature through every human age.

In this extractivist epoch, our society is overstimulated and overactive: doing, producing, buying, and selling. Darkness provides the counterbalancing quiet, nurturing, and, indeed, even mystery, which humanity desperately needs.

We are very good at measuring what light does for humans in the immediate sense. We are much worse at treating darkness as something with value that should be preserved by default, or at building decision frameworks that start with, “How dark should this remain?” rather than “How much light shall we add?” We can’t deny that light helps with safety and access in our cities. But just as plastic has useful practical applications, we must ask, where are the lines between useful, wasteful, and existentially damaging?

We don’t hate the night; in fact, we don’t even acknowledge it. We’re erasing darkness because we no longer recognise the dark as a real place, fundamental for life. I wonder what this loss will cost us.

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I’ve written about the backstory of how Nightfaring came into being in a previous post here.

Where can I buy Nightfaring?

I always recommend shopping at your local bookstore, which can order the book for you and will usually get it within a few days. Alternatively, if you want to shop online, I recommend bookshop.org, an online retailer that puts a percentage of profits toward independent bookstores (you can even nominate your bookstore of choice). You can also request Nightfaring at your local public library! It's also available through all major retailers, but I'd prefer you support independent businesses rather than billionaires.

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Adler Planetarium event

This week, on Wednesday, April 1st (no joke), from 5-6 pm Central, I will be giving a presentation at Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Entry is free for Illinois residents, and you can find me in the Space Visualization Lab.

The Adler plays an important role in the final chapter of Nightfaring, for which I spent time with the planetarium’s teen light pollution advocates, learning about how they are working in their schools and neighborhoods to combat the problem of overlighting in Chicago. I was deeply inspired by the teens that I met, and I’m pleased to say that several of the teens featured in the book will also be with me on Wednesday, presenting about their light pollution programs.

I also have upcoming appearances on several podcasts and radio programs in the US and the UK. Please keep an eye on my Instagram, Bluesky and Threads accounts for details on when those drop.

Exciting upcoming announcement

In the coming days, I’ll be announcing an exciting new chance to travel with me to a dark location. I have been working with a US-based, nature conservation-focused travel agency to create a brand new, dark-sky-themed tour to an incredible night sky location (hint: it is in Africa!).

The trip will take place next year (2027), and I will be co-leading the tour, giving evening talks on dark skies, light pollution, nocturnal conservation, and astronomy. There will also be chances to spot African wildlife, meet conservationists, learn about ancient cultures, be immersed in otherworldly landscapes, and of course, sleep under the stars.

Stay tuned here on Nightfall and Elsewhere for more details later this week.

They named it ‘the place with a commanding view’, and I could see why. Standing on a sloped bluff looking south, the Mediterranean Sea spread away. There was a strong breeze that whipped my hair around, but the water far below looked placid and sparkled in the midday sun. The land before me was a rocky garigue scrubland blanketed in Maltese thyme and yellow crown daisies, where bees purred at February’s early pollen.

Sometimes, at the tail end of a British winter, one reaches the end of their rope with the dank weather, and this year we had one of the wettest winters on record. By early February, I was losing my mind and booked a last-minute flight to Malta, an island nation in the middle of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily. A few days in the sunshine would surely solve my bad brain, and there was something else to see in Malta, too.

As I stood on the hillside, I squinted in the bright sunshine and looked around. I was standing on a path between two of the most ancient stone structures made by humankind: Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra – a pair of megalithic temples built some 5,500 years ago. Constructed of standing stones around 3200 BCE, they are older than Stonehenge, Ireland’s Newgrange and the Egyptian pyramids.

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There are some 50-odd stone structures across Malta and its small neighbouring island, Gozo, the seven largest of which form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All that the experts really know is that they were built by a Stone Age people who might have migrated from other parts of the Mediterranean. It’s assumed the stone structures were used for sacred purposes, although no one is entirely sure of their origins, how they were built or the purpose of the temples. Local legend says that a giantess named Sansuna, who lived exclusively on broad beans and honey, built them in one night, carrying stones on her head.

One thing that is known is that they have astronomical alignments. The upper temple, Ħaġar Qim, contains a mysterious carved opening known as the ‘oracle hole’, through which the sun shines into a chamber on the summer solstice.

Below it, perched on a hillside facing the sea, the Mnajdra complex contains three joined temples with several connections to the sky. Openings in the lower temple align to both the solstices and the equinoxes, allowing sunlight to pour in through its main corridor and hit either the main axis (equinoxes) or the stone slabs on either side of the axis (solstices). Stones found at the sites were carved with spirals. More unusually, several were instead decorated with numerous drilled holes, including one stone that contains rows with different numbers of holes that can be linked to different periods of the Moon cycle.

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My research for Nightfaring took me to several ancient sites, including the ancestral Puebloan city at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, which has great houses oriented to solar and lunar cycles, including solstices, equinoxes and the 18.6-year lunar standstill. Puebloan spiral motifs found on rock carvings in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Arizona, are also believed to be associated with the solstices. In Ireland, I visited the Boheh Stone, which is covered in spiral carvings believed to be related to a specific day of the year when the setting Sun from that vantage appears to ‘roll’ down the side of the sacred mountain, Croagh Patrick.

It is interesting to me that ancient peoples from many places independently used spirals, holes and simple star carvings to understand and record how the night sky moved over a year. It speaks to a time when people’s lives after dark were simple. With no artificial light to disrupt their view of the sky, nor distracting modern technology in the evening, they could easily track the annual patterns of the stars, sunsets and sunrises, and then build structures to align with them. We know that later societies used that information for agricultural and navigation purposes, among many other activities.

Beyond the ancient temple sites, the island of Malta makes for a relaxed getaway with a mix of architecture, natural sites and coastal wonders, seafood, war history and former British colony (and the cheap sun-holiday drinking establishments that inevitably come with that). I didn’t have time, but with an extra day, you can sign up for a boat excursion to the less populous island of Gozo to see another ancient temple, Ġgantija, which also aligns with the equinoxes.

Travel practicalities

Flights on budget airlines and major carriers arrive at Malta Airport from across Europe (I flew from London Gatwick with KM Malta Airlines there and easyJet back). Local buses connect up the entire island, and you can also use the Bolt rideshare service to hire a taxi to/from just about anywhere, including the Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra Archaeological Park (tickets €10, book online in advance).

I stayed at The Waterfront Hotel in the Sliema neighbourhood of Malta’s capital city, Valetta. I recommend taking the short-but-scenic Sliema-Valetta Ferry (€4.80 day return) to explore Valetta’s old town (just be prepared to walk up and down a lot of hills and stairs!). For local seafood and Maltese wine, I enjoyed Barracuda Restaurant overlooking St Julian’s Bay.

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During the first few days of January 2020, I posted on Twitter that I was going to write a book about darkness and the night. I was looking for dark places to visit, dark hotels to stay in and other starry sky experiences. I had a pretty decent following on that platform (RIP) and got a handful of replies, including an invitation from a beautiful guesthouse on Knoydart Peninsula in the Scottish Highlands – a completely off-the-grid community with no roads that’s only accessible by ferry or on foot over the fells. I also wrote a single sentence on my website, buried in the ‘Dark Sky’ page, that I was writing a book on the topic.

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Of course, we all know what happened in the weeks and months after that. All of my travel plans were put on indefinite hold, and the thought of visiting faraway locations to see the night sky became wishful thinking.

During the first UK lockdown, though, I did start writing. I wrote about dark places I’d been. I pulled from memories. I metabolised trips I’d taken several years earlier, thinking about them in a new way, through the lens of darkness. But as the pandemic stretched into its second year and the UK went from one lockdown, to another and then an unthinkable third, my creative bone crumbled into ash. I even signed up for writing workshops online. I looked at photos of memorable trips. But I just could not write. I shelved the essays I’d written early in the pandemic and, frankly, kind of forgot about them.

Two years went by, along with a major health scare, and then out of nowhere, an email dropped into my inbox from a literary agent named Jack Fogg. Jack was formerly an editor at Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House and Harper, and had recently started his own literary agency. He had seen my name mentioned in a news story about a newly certified Dark Sky Sanctuary in the UK and found that sentence buried on my website: I was writing a book about dark skies. Reader: I was not writing a book about dark skies. LOL. I had written some essays, I told him, and sent him the raw writing. He liked it and thought it could become a book, and offered to sign me. (Thank you, Jack, thank you.)

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From there, we formulated a proposal and an outline. I wrote sample chapters, Jack edited them for me and finally he said my work was ready to go out to publishers. Within a couple of months, we had offers and I was delighted to accept the one from Big Five publisher Simon & Schuster here in the UK, as well as one with Hachette for the rights in North America.

That, friends, is the story of how Nightfaring was born.

It seems surreal and long ago now. I have always written, and always dreamed of being an author, and so to walk into bookshops in central London yesterday and see my own memoir on shelves next to huge-name writers, like Michael Palin, was beyond a dream come true.

Writing this book was a great privilege. It served as inspiration, but also therapy, challenging my ideas about what I was capable of. It was hard, but it was so fun. I loved each step, even the ones that poked at my ego (hello: editing) and the ones that really pushed me to face my fears (hello: four days in the dark).

Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness is a memoir that interrogates our relationship with darkness and the night. It is a story of people and places and landscapes and myths. It is intensely personal but, I hope, also universal.

I don’t know if I have any real answers about why we are lighting up the night so quickly, but I do understand what gifts darkness gives us.

And I hope, if you read it, you will be inspired to think about darkness in a new way, too.

Oh, and I did make it to that remote community on Knoydart in Scotland, somewhere in between the second and third lockdowns. Thanks to the kind invitation of Knoydart River Cottage and its owner, Britta Bernard (who is a stargazer and also an incredible chef). If you have a chance to go there, I can’t recommend it enough. In addition to dark and starry night skies, Knoydart is a community that is proving humans can live in less extractive and more harmonious relationship with the land, the seasons, the Earth and each other. Here’s the story I wrote about my trip there for Scotland Magazine.

You can still pre-order in the UK and in the US/Canada. The pre-orders really help. They indicate to bookshops that there is upfront interest and ensure that booksellers are more likely to place it on order. That helps my sales, and it gets the book in front of booksellers and thus, readers, in an increasingly crowded market.

UK pre-order: NIGHTFARING: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness
Publication date: January 29, 2026

North America pre-order: NIGHTFARING: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness
Publication date: March 31, 2026

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Early Praise & Media

I am incredibly excited that Waterstones chose Nightfaring as one of its top non-fiction books to read in 2026, an absolutely massive accolade (For my US readers, Waterstones is the UK’s equivalent to Barnes & Noble).

I’m also grateful that a variety of media outlets have already reviewed Nightfaring and given it early praise.

Forbes listed it as one of the top books for stargazers, and New Scientist magazine put it on their list of the top popular science books for January.

It has also been reviewed in the current (Jan/Feb ‘26) issue of National Geographic Traveller, the January issue of Countryside magazine, and in Ireland’s Westmeath Independent newspaper. I owe deep thanks to all of the literary journalists and book reviewers who have taken the time to read and review Nightfaring so far.

Upcoming Events

In February, I’ll be on a short book tour around the UK. In March and April, I’ll be in the US to coincide with the book’s North America pub date, for book events and to see friends and family in Chicago, Kansas City, New Mexico and possibly Arizona or further afield.

Please drop me an email or a comment if you would like to schedule an event in the UK or the US.

Full details and tickets for the below events are available on my website.

Book Tour

3 February | First Draft Books | Devon
7 February | Dark Skies at Hertford Castle | Hertford
12 February | October Books | Southampton
13 February | South Downs Dark Skies Festival | Midhurst, West Sussex
17 February | North York Moors Dark Skies Festival | North Yorkshire

27 March | Lakeside Nature Center with DarkSky Missouri | Kansas City, MO
1 April | Adler Planetarium | Chicago (TBC)

Online & Podcasts

3 March | Royal Society for Asian Affairs Reading Room | Online
23 April | Peculiar Book Club live podcast | Online

Thank you all for sharing this journey with me. I really hope that you enjoy Nightfaring and that it inspires you to go outside and experience the night with new eyes.

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Quiet. Bone quiet. I awake without an alarm, having slept soundly in a bed at the edge of the world. The bathroom tiles are warm from radiant heat, but when I step out of the doors of Hótel Búðir just past 10 am, it is still pitch-black outside. The hotel is on a grassy flat at the boundary of the Búðahraun Nature Reserve, overlooking the North Atlantic from the Snæfellsnes Peninsula – the far west of Iceland. The reserve protects an 8,000-year-old lava field where hundreds of plant species now thrive – burkina, sundews, ferns and Paris quadrifolia, or the lover’s knot, all growing in clumps of old fire that crawled out of Earth’s core and solidified.

I came to Iceland to see the northern lights. This is the last year of the solar maximum; another opportunity to see lively and consistent aurora won’t happen again until the mid-2030s.

Last night, a hard storm blew down on Snæfellsnes. A not uncommon occurrence here, said the man at reception (he was also the bartender and the restaurant’s one waiter).

“Is this normal weather?” I asked, wondering if it was typically clearer this time of year.

“Oh, it is very abnormal,” he chuckled. “Usually, we would have snow up to our knees by now. This is very odd.”

Before I went to Iceland, friends who’d been before gave varying reports, ranging from how incredible it is to how frustrating and, frankly, weird. My friend and astro journalist Stephanie Vermillion recommended Snæfellsnes, and fellow travel writer Oliver Smith told me that Buðir was the place he loved. Others regaled me with waterfalls to see, holes to dive into, caves to explore and volcanoes to walk around.

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The thing was, I hadn’t gone to Iceland for any of that. I’d gone to be in a place where time seems irrelevant. To let the land kind of subsume me. To feel 19 hours of darkness drape around my shoulders, and squint at the sun’s weak attempts to breach the horizon for a few minutes each morning, before giving up and settling back into night once again. And for aurora.

I carried my suitcase out of Búðir, across the empty, dark road, still covered in a clear layer of black ice, to where I’d parked my SUV, and scraped thick frost off the windscreen. At 10:13 am, light was appearing, covering the lumbering, empty mountains and brown grass in a ghostly veil of dawn. The car’s studded tyres made a crackling noise on the road when I pulled out. There was no one else around.

After an hour, the sky was light and clouded over, and I pulled off at a rest area below a mountain named Hafursfell, which rose out of a ridge of volcanic cliffs. The sun was heating the frozen ground, lifting moisture into a strange, bright fog.

When the winter sun does appear in Iceland, the effect is eerie. The light is long, physically speaking, because it travels horizontally across the landscape rather than down from a zenith. Hot and cold mix. Everything swirls. Steam curls up from distant hot springs. And cold, cold wind threatens to whip your car door into the Atlantic.

My friend and astrojournalist, Jamie Carter, had recommended Hótel Húsafell as one of the best in the world for aurora, due to its location at the base of the Langjökull glacier. A high, clear spot with less cloud cover and protected from Reykjavík’s light pollution by mountains. I drove inland, listening to Billboard Heart by Deep Sea Diver, a record that can somehow fill the liminal expanse of Iceland-in-the-windshield with its boundless percussion and echoing warmth.

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That night at Húsafell, I drank a non-alcoholic beer, avoided looking at the currency conversion rate, and then got into my long johns and layered on all my woolly things, pulled out the camera and went outside. The hotel has some exterior lighting, which they are careful with, but it’s still not perfectly dark, so I walked gingerly away from the central courtyard, past the car park and up a gravel track that led east away from the light. I stood there and let myself get good and cold, enjoying the curling in of muscles, the shrinking of blood vessels and numbing fingers, neck aching from looking up, up, up.

Then, clouds. Weird, stringy clouds. Moving, grey clouds.

Are those clouds?

Pointing my phone up, through the camera, yes! Green streaks and curving ribbons and rivers of emerald light.

Aurora!

Somewhere below me, a group of guests emerged from the hotel, and I could hear their shouts of delight. The show was really going now, and I kept the video recording, but I really did not need the camera to see it. Ribbons undulating, dancing, swaying, circling over me like a poem from somewhere in the cosmic beyond. Then, there were tears, and I strained because the other group was making noise and listening to music, and I was flooded with a strange mix of awe and distraction.

I’d read somewhere that those who are careful and quietly attuned enough might be able to hear the aurora, and my ego wanted to hear it. Instead, I got Sabrina Carpenter blasting from a bad phone speaker.

But the stronger the display got, the more their shouts and whoops and cries of delight softened me. I look at the sky all the time, but maybe, for these folks, it was their first chance to really notice the cosmos. Not just a glance in passing, but to stop, stand and feel its effects embodied: joy, shouts of wonder, laughter spilling out of throats into icy darkness.

And that was what the aurora gave me on a night in Iceland. A heart more open. Compassion. Connectedness. A reminder we are all just here, together, on this strange, small rocky planet…feeling, experiencing, laughing, listening to music, falling in love and watching the aurora dance on a cold night over the North Atlantic.

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Enjoyed this article? Pre-order my book, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness. It will be released on 29 January 2026 in the UK & Ireland, and on 31 March 2026 in North America.

It had finally turned properly cold this week – the type of chill we Londoners expect in November – but an earlier rain had cleared off and the sun set early, leaving the pavements wet and shop windows glinting with recently hung holiday cheer. I brushed past the Christmas market in Trafalgar Square (Christmas markets are a December-only activity for me – I think it keeps the season special if it’s shorter), ducked across the street and climbed the steps into the portal at St Martin. From there, you can see all of Trafalgar Square and, in the winter, with the leaves fallen, the view stretches down towards Whitehall, Downing Street and Big Ben.

Inside, God or the church administrators had turned up the heating, somehow miraculously making the stone interior warm and cosy. The ticket for the concert was only £10 and I always hire a seat cushion – partly because the wooden pews are hard on the tailbone, and partly because it’s nice to support the work St Martin does, which includes programmes for the unhoused, a centre for the Chinese immigrant community and generally being a leading voice in global humanitarian issues (you know, actual Christ-ian charity).

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The performers at St Martin are world-class and regularly release albums, and I think it must be the best-value concert in all of London. It was also half-empty, and I’d like to encourage any visitor to London to add a concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields to their itinerary.

Director of Music Andrew Earis introduced “Night Flight”, which featured 13 works of choral music from various eras, designed to lead the listener through the night from sunset through the late, drowsy hours, then into dreams and finally waking again with the sun’s return.

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The opening work was “Nightfall”, a Sara Teasdale poem set to a choral arrangement by Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds; it brought me instantly to tears, as live music seems to do lately. I was also moved by the concert’s titular work, “Night Flight” by British composer Cecilia McDowall, who was in the audience and stood to introduce the work, which she said was written to mark the centenary of the first female pilot, Harriet Quimby’s, flight across the English Channel in 1912 – a forgotten feat due to its proximity in time to the sinking of the Titanic. And my favourite of the evening was “Today” by a 27-year-old composer from Cambridge University, Lucy Walker, who is also St Martin’s Voices’ composer-in-residence. Its glorious, soaring melody beckons us from darkness back to light at sunrise:

As the day keeps unveiling all her grandeur
Let the chains of yesterday break away;
Today is here, I will not cling to yesterday.

Below, I have provided the concert’s song list as well as the opening Sara Teasdale poem in full (it is public domain), and a couple of my favourite songs that I was able to find online.

“Night Flight” was a beautiful reminder of how important the night is, not just as a physical ecosystem for living things, but as an artistic space that has inspired humans to rest, dream, sing, write and paint for all of human history.

Nightfall

We will never walk again
As we used to walk at night,
Watching our shadows lengthen
Under the gold street-light
When the snow was new and white.
We will never walk again
Slowly, we two,
In spring when the park is sweet
With midnight and with dew,
And the passers-by are few.
I sit and think of it all,
And the blue June twilight dies, —
Down in the clanging square
A street-piano cries
And stars come out in the skies.

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)

“What is that? Wait, that’s not the Moon…I’m all turned around,” said Ken Walczak, pointing at a bright white light floating steadily through low clouds. We were on a bus full of light pollution researchers driving along a dark road in rural Co Mayo, and the light was moving overhead in a steady, inland direction from the Atlantic Ocean.

“It’s not blinking. It’s not a plane,” I said, following the light, which seemed to be surrounded by an eerie fog or cloud of moisture.

The thing about skywatching in a group of geeks who regularly spend time looking at the sky is that you know when something is truly strange. We are well-schooled in every possible type of evening light, both artificial and natural. This object was too big and too low to be the International Space Station or any other satellite, and it wasn’t a celestial object, because it was moving at high speed.

“UFO. It’s unidentified, so UFO,” I laughed, and Ken agreed, but we were still mystified. That night, the clouds parted into a clear, starry sky over Mayo International Dark Sky Park. As we stood under the Milky Way, taking photos and guessing what SQM (sky quality metre) reading we might get there (light pollution nerd chat), we heard people from the other bus discussing the same mysterious bright moving object. No one had an answer.

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Part of me wanted to leave the UFO a mystery, but the journalist in me decided to go online and have a look around. Sure enough, conspiracy theorists were already flooding TikTok with sightings and Irish tabloids had splashed the headline across their websites: Strange ‘UFO’ light in skies over Ireland.

Eventually, I found that the UFO had an explanation: excess fuel had been ejected from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida earlier in the day and froze in midair. Because it was still early evening when it passed over us, the cloud of frozen fuel reflected the just-set sunlight, causing it to have a luminous, fuzzy halo.

If you know me, you’ll know I was sort of disappointed to find a reasonable explanation. I’m a strange mix of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in one: I want to believe, but I’m too curious and logical to let the unexplained be. Still, I think mysteries are the spice of life, and the world would be incredibly boring if we understood the logical reasoning behind everything.

For years, I have dreamed of having a little writer’s cottage on a windswept lough in the west of Ireland, and so it was no trouble at all to spend a week in Westport, Co Mayo, for the Artificial Light at Night Conference (ALAN). This biennial gathering is the largest conference on light pollution research, drawing people from many disciplines and backgrounds.

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This year’s event, held the last week of October, drew some 200 people from more than 40 countries, all of them involved in light pollution in one form or another. There were scientists doing ground- and space-based measurements of sky glow, ecologists studying light pollution’s effects on birds, mammals, crayfish and oysters, lighting designers presenting novel responsible lighting solutions, statisticians and social scientists surveying the safety and social justice implications of light at night, and true geeks who are modelling light scatter and making predictions about its reach and impacts.

For me, the highlights were getting to see old friends and meet new people from all over the world – South Africa, Uruguay, New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany – and taking field trips to see Co Mayo and Galway by both day and night.

For me, every trip to the west of Ireland reveals some new poetry in the landscape. I’ve spent a lot of time here, starting from my first-ever trip abroad when I was 20, and then through years of studying in Ireland and being married into an Irish family. I always come back to this part of the world.

An excursion on the last day took a group of us south from Westport, dipping into Co Galway and rambling through the Gaeltacht – one of the Irish-speaking areas where people still use the Indigenous language day-to-day. Up a narrow, winding mountain road, the bus pulled off and we piled out into sideways rain and wind. Low clouds hung over bare mountains that cascaded down into a perfect little lake: Loch na Fuaiche, or Lough Nafooey in its Anglicised form.

Our guide, Benjamin Thébaudeau, a geologist from the soon-to-be-designated Joyce Country and Western Lakes Geopark, pointed out evidence of volcanic activity here from 480 million years ago, when Ireland was covered by an ocean and magma bubbled up under the water, forming a small island at this spot.

I let my imagination run away for a moment, thinking about that newly formed rock, emerging up from ancient water, still visible now. The first moments of the island of Ireland.

Enjoyed this article? Pre-order my book, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness. It will be released on 29 January 2026 in the UK & Ireland, and on 31 March 2026 in North America.

Today’s piece originally appeared on a blog called The Santa Fe Traveler, written by Santa Fe tourism professionals Billie Frank and Steve Collins. I was sad to learn of Billie’s passing a few years ago – she was very kind to me and gave me a space to write this piece, which is close to my heart.

As we also mourn the passing of the great Robert Redford, another long-time Santa Fe resident and someone whom I had the pleasure of meeting at my grandfather’s Santa Fe movie set (keep reading for more), I was reminded of this piece of writing. Sadly, The Santa Fe Traveler blog has passed on with Billie, but I dug this piece out of the Wayback Machine and am sure that Billie and Steve would be happy to have it republished here.

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It would be impossible to talk about my upbringing without mentioning my grandfather, J.W. Eaves. Mostly, I remember how he was tall and lean and his height was only lengthened by his habit of constantly wearing a grey Stetson cowboy hat. He also wore ostrich skin cowboy boots, brown slacks and a button-down shirt. On special occasions, he donned a turquoise bolo tie, and he always had a cigarette in his hand, but from this basic and very iconic attire, he never faltered.

Some of my earliest memories are from summers, which my sister and I spent at my grandparents’ house over the hill from our own. My grandmother would sit, stately and surrounded by fine things, and watch soap operas, and we would go off on adventures in my granddad’s gold and white 1984 Ford Bronco. He loved to take it off-road and was convinced that the Ole Bron-co, as he called it in his East Texas drawl, was completely invincible. It would frequently get stuck in one ditch or another during these excursions, and we would have to call for the guy down the road – an explosives expert named Russ Deal, who had a handy collection of John Deere tractors and backhoes – to come and pull us out.

I wish I could say that my grandfather’s pride and joy was Ermalea, his wife, but really it was his Movie Ranch. Named for him, the J.W. Eaves Movie Ranch was the setting for most of the world’s great cowboy movies. And it was the backdrop of my childhood.

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I could see the ‘movie town’, as we always called it, from the bedroom window of my childhood home. It was just across the pasture and, when a movie was filming, the town would be lit up all hours of the night. If I stood on my back porch, I could hear the shots of blank bullets echoing off the tipsy wooden Saloon and the Independence Hotel, as Robert Duvall and Kiefer Sutherland and Gene Hackman brought to life scenes that cowboy dreams are made of.

While other kids my age were going to see The Karate Kid and listening to Boys II Men, I was hanging out in the dusty alleys at the movie town, sometimes getting a hammer and nailing down loose planks along the town’s boardwalks and other times acting out dramatic scenes from The Cowboys and Silverado with my sister in the Saloon. I knew every nook and cranny and could find my way through the back holes and upper bannisters of each cobweb-laden building.

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I knew which buildings opened and which were only fronts, and I could spout the history of the town off by memory, just from listening to my grandfather introduce it to anyone who would happen by. The speech always started the same way:

The town was built in 1969 for the Cheyenne Social Club, directed by Gene Kelly and starring Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda…

The town seemed timeless. On those long, dusty summer afternoons, my sister and I would make a game of listening for passing cars and keeping track of the comings and goings of our neighbours. We invented new names for the buildings, and each had a claim to one of the horse-drawn buggies scattered around the town.

When other girls my age were fawning over Jon Bon Jovi and Michael J. Fox, I was developing an awkward crush on Kevin Costner’s uncombed hair, watching him every day for nearly a year as he played Wyatt Earp at my movie town.

For decades, two or three times a year, the big white catering vans and equipment trucks would roll in and take over the town with their mic booms and their camera tracks and their star-studded casts, and each time I’d wonder who I’d spot this time. Would it be Kevin Kline? Emilio Estevez or Dennis Quaid? Maybe Bill Pullman, Catherine O’Hara, Robert Redford, Kenny Rogers, or even Willie Nelson? They all graced the movie town with their presence at one time or another, and I would always be there, the shy and awkward little girl with tangled hair trailing behind J.W. and blushing when he’d introduce me like a grown-up and expect me to shake hands like a man.

In the later years, the movie business changed, and people no longer wanted to watch westerns, so the town fell quiet. My grandfather eventually started opening it up to tourism and private events, which did well enough, but still were nothing like the glory days of two or three movie shoots a year.

In the time thereafter, demons tore through my family and caught us all in a whirlwind of internal strife that we’re only now healing from. Papa passed away, and suddenly those days were long gone. More recently, the town was sold out of our family to a neighbour, Clint Mortenson, who has promised to revive the spirit of the set and the Old West. I hope that is true, but I am also mourning its loss.

I haven’t lived in Santa Fe for many years, but when I do go back, I always pass by the Movie Town, its teetery buildings still somehow standing, though more weathered than I remember them and somehow smaller than my memories do justice. And if I look hard enough, I can still see my grandfather striding gallantly up to greet a newcomer as Gene Autry blares through the speakers.

How are you today, sir? They’d address him.

Any better, I couldn’t stand it.

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In the early hours of 31 May 2020, while the world lay silent in pandemic lockdown, Clyde Foster was looking through his telescope in Centurion, South Africa. A keen amateur astronomer, Clyde spent many nights in his home-built observatory taking pictures of the solar system. On that night, he had focused his scope on Jupiter and was snapping images when he noticed something unusual: a bright spot gleaming below Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot.

Having looked at the planets nightly for many years and feeling sure this was something very unusual, Clyde alerted a network of other astronomers around the world, including the folks at NASA. As chance would have it, only two days later, NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which orbits Jupiter taking photos, was passing over that region of the planet and captured some high-resolution images of it.

Clyde Foster had spotted a new storm on the gas giant.

Though it was officially designated Dark Spot 7 (DS7), the storm was nicknamed ‘Clyde’s Spot’. Its powerful plume of cloud material erupted from the upper cloud layers of Jupiter's atmosphere and continues to swirl.

The day I met Clyde, I’d driven from Barkhan Dune Retreat in the Namib Desert. I’d departed early in the morning, waving goodbye to the retreat’s resident meerkats, and drove my rented Toyota 4x4 north up the D1275, a gravel road that leads over winding Spreetshoogte Pass, from where it feels like all of Namibia is visible. I rolled the windows down and sang loudly to Bon Iver’s song ‘Day One’, which I had been listening to repeatedly during my road trip around Namibia.

A little while later, I stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn, which was marked by a peeling sign covered in stickers and graffiti – the deep desert had dropped away, and I was now up in the Gamsberg Highlands, an arid plateau dotted with succulents, dwarf shrubs and thorny trees.

A few years after his famous Jovian spot spotting, Clyde and his wife Marina decided they wanted to spend more time under dark skies in Namibia, and they were offered accommodation on Farm Goellschau, the same farm as at the H.E.S.S. Telescope, a system of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes that takes pictures of gamma rays.

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“Just look out for the gate with the cactuses on each side,” Clyde directed me via text message when he invited me to ‘the ranch’ where he and Marina reside adjacent to H.E.S.S. When I pulled in, a couple of men in outback hats were inspecting a herd of cattle in a pen out front by the road. Clyde emerged from the ranch house and waved me in, then led me around the premises, showing off the kitchen that he and Marina had renovated, a variety of guest bungalows that are sometimes used by visiting researchers and astronomers, and his pride and joy: a home observatory, which he’d built out of two large storage sheds onto which was installed a retractable roof for the telescope. Inside were five computer screens flashing the name ‘Oryx Observatory’ with GPS coordinates and a picture of the shed under a starry sky.

“These last few months, I’ve been looking at Saturn,” Clyde told me, explaining that the planet had been changing position so that the view of its rings moved from edge-on to tilted so the underside of the rings was illuminated by the Sun.

“What’s amazing about Saturn’s rings is that they are paper-thin! Just 30 to 100 metres wide. That’s, in some cases, less than the distance from here to the house,” he said, pointing at the short track we’d walked from his back garden to the observatory.

In the afternoon, we jumped into Clyde’s dusty truck, and he drove me out across the plateau along barely visible tyre tracks through the bush. I hopped in and out of the truck opening and closing all manner of gates and shooing lazy cows out of the way (“You’re a dab hand at herding cattle,” he said. “I grew up on a ranch in New Mexico. You never stop being a ranch girl,” I told him).

Here and there, we spotted ‘pumba antennas’ – the tails of warthogs held straight up as they ran through the grass, and sometimes the long, pointed horns of wild oryx grazing in the distance.

At the top of a hill, we pulled off at a place where Clyde said the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT) – a new black hole-hunting radio telescope, the first of its kind on the continent – will be built. For now, the only visible evidence of it was two solar panels surrounded by curly barbed wire. One of the panels was bent on both ends.

“Baboons,” said Clyde. “They’ll tear these panels right up. The AMT team has been doing a lot of testing out here to make sure the conditions are right for radio astronomy. These panels are powering some sensors and monitors.”

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We were standing at the highest point in the vicinity. Around us, the bush stretched away for a hundred miles in every direction, with mountains drawing soft shapes along the distant horizons and a thin sweep of cloud brushed across the sky. To the south, the Gamsberg rose into a flattop mountain – the type we’d call a mesa in New Mexico.

Once built, the AMT will serve as an essential African link to a global network called the Event Horizon Telescope, which, in 2019, took the first-ever picture of a black hole, providing direct evidence for their existence and proving Einstein's theory of general relativity.

H.E.S.S. is an array of five telescopes that detects faint showers of Cherenkov light, a blue glow produced when high-energy cosmic gamma rays hit Earth's atmosphere. Its images allow astronomers to investigate supernova remnants, pulsar winds, active galactic nuclei (supermassive black holes at the centre of distant galaxies), and dark matter, which contributes crucial understanding of extreme cosmic environments and the origins of the most energetic particles in the universe.

Driving over the hill from the new AMT site, H.E.S.S. comes into view: a grid of five giant red steel frames, each with a tessellated dish of mirrors that focus Cherenkov light onto a special camera. Much like a satellite dish, each frame can rotate on its axis to point towards the light.

It was lunchtime when Clyde showed me around the main control room, and all of the astronomers had emptied out, leaving a room full of screens showing diagrams of the dishes in different positions and polygons of their mirrors. A row of shiny, green hard hats was waiting on one wall, and on the other, a set of graphs and calendars was hung up along with a poster showing the snakes of southern Africa and what to do in the event of a snake bite.

Outside, Clyde let me climb up on one of the steel frames to get a closer look at the dish: a giant hexagonal mirror formed of smaller, interconnected hexagonal mirrors. I took some selfies, and then Clyde said we should move along because there was one more thing he wanted to show me.

We drove away from H.E.S.S. through the bush along a track only Clyde could see, and he parked at the base of a large orange rock formation, whose top protrusions had been carved away by wind and water so that they looked like they had been piled intentionally into giant cairns, some teetering as if they might topple with the next big gust.

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He got out and pulled walking sticks from the boot of the truck, handing me one and heading off into the tall yellow grass. I followed, marvelling silently at a tree corpse rising from the rocks, whose trunk was so black it looked like it must have been burnt by millennia of relentless Namibian sunshine.

Around the back of the formation, we clambered up through the rocks (me looking trepidatiously in every crevice, remembering the snake poster). Here, Clyde pointed to a series of figures painted in dark red on the rock face. Humans lined up side-by-side and, on another facade a little further down, what looked like oryx or large antelope.

“Bushmen paintings,” said Clyde. “Not sure how old. I believe an expert has been out to look at them before, but so far, no one has dated them. Could be a couple hundred years old; could be ten thousand years old.”

I stared at the painted figures for a minute and then turned around and looked out across the savanna. The grass was a straw colour and had grown to almost knee-height from recent rain. There were scattered camel thorn trees and flat-topped acacias and a giant blue sky.

If the Indigenous San people had lived here thousands of years ago, how much would have changed since then? Not much, perhaps. The sky would have been as blue by day and as dark and starry at night as the Namibian sky is now. They would have watched Jupiter’s bright transits, seen the fiery streaks of Perseid meteor showers every August, and hunted the type of oryx I’d eaten many times during this trip.

It seems there are so few places left where we can experience the same Earth that our ancestors did, and Namibia is still one. And yet, a couple of miles away from this ancient site, one high-tech telescope was photographing cosmic rays and another was being built to study the origins of the universe.

An odd contradiction, and I thought, how lucky I was to stand on the precipice of time and see them both.

Enjoyed this feature? Pre-order my book, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness.

Dispatches are short, scenic essays that bring you along to a specific time or place with me. They do not necessarily tell elaborate stories. Rather, they are meant to be immersive snapshots of a particular memorable moment.

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Night falls cinematically over Camp Sossus – first in shades of orange and magenta that sweep across the horizon as the sun sets, then settling into a deep azure blue. Acrux, Mimosa, Gacrux and Imai pop out above the southern horizon, forming the beloved Southern Hemisphere constellation, Crux, or the Southern Cross. It lies below the horizon from the Northern Hemisphere and is thus one of the special aspects of the Southern sky that one can only partake of from this side of the world.

I watch the heavens change colours along with a small group of other travellers – a Swiss mother and son, an older couple from the US, and a large group of friends who identified as being simultaneously from London, South Africa and Texas. We hover around a big wooden bar planted on the plains below the camp, placed there specifically for sundowners. One of the guides, Samuel, is mixing strong gin-and-tonics. The desert spreads away behind him and the sun, a fiery ball, dips behind distant dry mountains.

Back at the lodge, the others and I sit around wooden tables and feast on game meat – oryx is a specialty of Namibia, a lean, juicy red meat similar to beef and without a strongly gamey flavour. Outside, the desert has darkened to ink and a small line of amber lamps light an ankle-high path to the rooms, situated along the base of a small mountain, each constructed of local stone and upcycled sheet metal.

Though there’s a comfy bed inside my room, tonight, I’ve asked to sleep in my star bed. It’s located on a platform above the open-air bathroom and is accessed by a small, curving staircase.

Here I find a double bed made up with plush sheets and pillows. The wind has picked up while the temperature has dropped to single digits – a final rush of August winter in these parts, and the nights really do get cold out here, so I’ve put on my thermals. I know under the covers a hot water bottle will be waiting – one of the simplest and most comforting elements of staying in an African lodge.

The bed faces away from the mountain, out towards a wide expanse of desert hemmed by another faraway ridge.

First, I hear the snorts and yappy barks of a small dazzle of zebra that have taken up residence around the camp’s watering hole. They appear to be bedding down for the night here, too. After a few minutes, there’s a different noise – high-pitched wails and shrieks which, had I been in London, I’d have put down to the local population of urban fox. But out here, I know it’s something else: jackals. Black-backed jackals, to be precise, which look like a mix between a coyote and fox, are mainly nocturnal and eat anything from rodents to insects, berries and scavenged matter.

Though farther north, in Egypt, the jackal can be a bad omen associated with Anubis, the god of the underworld and death, down here in the Namib Desert, jackals are considered resilient, savvy and resourceful animals that can teach us about survival in even the most difficult conditions. They have adapted to an incredibly hot, waterless climate and can eat almost anything. They also pair up and mate for life, using teamwork to hunt and raise young. I happen to think jackals are kind of magical.

I tuck in and listen for awhile. The howls are far away and echo off the mountainside. It’s warm under the covers and I fall asleep with the whipping wind.

Full disclosure: I stayed at Camp Sossus on a discounted FAM/media rate, and thanks to the host organisation Ultimate Safaris, with whom I’m working on an upcoming project (stay tuned). I pride myself on high journalistic ethics and will never, ever, ever give positive coverage just because of discounts or freebies.

Enjoyed this dispatch? Pre-order my book, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness.

Muslim contributions to astronomy are a topic I cover in my upcoming book, Nightfaring (preorder it here). The name Vega, for example, comes from the Arabic ‘waqi’, meaning ‘falling’ or ‘landing’, referring to a time when people saw its constellation, Lyra, not as the harp we see in Western astronomy, but rather as a swooping vulture. Deneb comes from the Arabic word for tail – a reference to its position in the constellation Cygnus the Swan.

So who gets to name the stars?

Most of the Western names for the stars are derived from Arabic, and the constellations (star patterns) we see most often come from Greek and Roman myths. In 1922, the International Astronomical Union, a leading international organisation for professional astronomers, officially adopted a list of 88 constellations, which are the recognised constellations in the Western world. These constellations divide the entire celestial sphere into specific regions.

But what we see in the sky is subjective, and people across different cultures and periods have interpreted the sky in their own ways throughout all of human history. In Kenya, for example, I learned that the Samburu people see Orion not as the rapey Greek hunter we know in Western astronomy, but rather as three Samburu warriors taking a lamb to slaughter.

Though we tend to see the stars now as fixed in these well-known Western constellations (which is handy for a universal understanding of the sky), really, they are not fixed. We can look up and see what we like. Interpreting the sky in new and alternative ways can help us tell fresh stories and build new associations with the universe and nature around us. And it can make the sky more meaningful and relatable to new generations of stargazers.

This calls to mind a new constellation invented by DarkSky Advocate, Alejandro Sommer, in Argentina. He and his stargazing team recently decided to reimagine some constellations based on stories they thought were a little more relevant to their audiences. They changed the Southern Cross (a prominent constellation visible in the Southern Hemisphere) into a moment during the 2022 World Cup final, when Argentina’s goalkeeper, ‘El Dibu’ Martinez, saved the team from a French goal, and they ended up winning the cup.

I’ve seen Alejandro share this new constellation story with an audience in Argentina, having fun with the kids and making them guess what the ‘updated’ constellation was until finally they all landed on the pop culture moment everyone in the country knows: the legendary World Cup save. In that moment, a whole new group of stargazers was created from a young generation that might otherwise never have seen or remembered the night sky.

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Earlier in July, I attended the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting in Durham – the country’s largest academic conference for astronomy and geophysics. Every year, I join the Royal Astronomical Society’s communications team as a media consultant, developing astronomy research into press releases that make it into newspapers, magazines and TV news.

At the conference was an art installation called ‘The Origins of the X-Ray Zodiac’ by astronomers Martin Ward and John A. Price. They’d reimagined the 12 familiar constellations of the zodiac (which you might know as horoscope signs, but that’s a different post…) using not the visible light of stars, but X-ray light – real maps of the whole sky made in the 1980s.

“We invited John to reimagine the zodiac using X-ray scans of the night sky, finding fresh patterns and creating new symbols drawn from his own experiences and imagination,” read the intro to their exhibit.

The X-ray zodiac was imaginative, transforming the traditional symbols of the zodiac into more familiar and relatable concepts: Aries became the Squid, Taurus became the Raven, Capricorn the Teapot and my own Sun sign, Leo, became the Hound as a nod to Laika, the Russian street dog that was the first animal sent into orbit in 1957.

We only see the stars and constellations the way we do because of geometry. Even moving to a different location on Earth can be far enough to change the angle of our vision, switching Orion from his standing position in the Northern Hemisphere to appearing upside down in the Southern Hemisphere.

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All of this is a reminder that how we interpret the sky is not set. These are cultural constructs and stories – the sky and the cosmos contain our imagination and all that is unknown. So, the next time you look up at the night sky, for a moment, put away what you’ve been told is there and see it for yourself.

Maybe you’ll find something completely new.

Coming up on Nightfall and Elsewhere

In August, I’ll be travelling to a wildlife reserve in South Africa and onwards to Namibia, a country with incredibly dark and starry skies. Namibia has been on my bucket list for many years. I’ll be sending you dispatches from my time in both locations: first from South Africa’s Lapalala Wilderness (watch Pangolin: Kulu's Journey on Netflix for the remarkable story of the rehabilitation and rewilding of a rescued pangolin at Lapalala by conservationist Gareth Thomas) and from my solo road trip across the Namib Desert to NamibRand Nature Reserve, Africa’s only Dark Sky Reserve – known for its starry skies, soaring red dunes and wildlife, including oryx gazelle, springbok, zebras, African wildcats and even cheetahs. Stay tuned.

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There was also, in my case, extensive travel. All told, I visited 8 countries in 18 months and wrote the book in that time. The advance payment covered my travel expenses but not my life, so I was also working as a consultant and doing odd bits of journalism along the way. This year, having delivered the manuscript, I thought I might have some downtime, but there follows a string of edits, proofs, meetings, planning and promotion. I have loved every moment so far.

I could not be more excited to bring Nightfaring into the world. It is truly a labour of love, of passion for the night, and of connection to the many people I have met around the world in my search to understand what darkness means to us all, as humankind. I can’t wait for you to read it. Which brings me to…

Pre-orders and cover art!

Readers in the UK and North America can now pre-order Nightfaring through bookshop.org or any local book store.

UK pre-order: NIGHTFARING: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness
Publication date: January 29, 2026

North America pre-order: NIGHTFARING: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness
Publication date: March 31, 2026

Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me.

Coming soon

In August and September, I will be travelling to South Africa, Namibia and Norway to explore the night sky, meet some incredible people doing wildlife and ecosystem conservation and immerse myself in some mysterious phenomena, so stay tuned and please subscribe to get all of my writing here for free.

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In the coming months, I will also be making announcements about the book launch parties (please come if you are in or near one), and other appearances for readings, signings, stargazing, dark sky festivals and more.

PLUS a very, very exciting new chance to come along with me on a dark sky trip next year.

Subscriptions and pledges

Currently, this newsletter is free for everyone, but in the next few months, I will be turning on a subscription option. Don’t worry – my writing will stay free for everyone forever, but I’ll be offering added perks for paying subscribers, like early-bird chances to attend events and trips, behind-the-scenes stories and photos from my Nightfaring research and more. There may even be even previews of my next book as it unfolds…

Thank you for joining me on this journey through the dark.

Want to know why Argentina and Wales are on my list of the best dark sky places to visit?

This week, I was invited to be a guest on the High-Yield Tourism Podcast to talk about dark sky tourism. It was a great conversation led by host Gary Bowerman, who is a tourism economics and trends consultant. We discussed the history of dark sky tourism and some of its challenges, as well as why I believe dark sky tourism can be a form of regenerative travel. We also discussed my upcoming book, NIGHTFARING, and my dark sky destination bucket list.

High-Yield Tourism Podcast Episode 15: Rethinking Stargazing & Dark Sky Tourism

You can stream the episode from your favourite podcast platform or visit their website to find links.

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“Why?”

“To protect them from snakes.”

It was hot. 35°C and humid, kind of hot. Rio de Janeiro hot. And we had been waiting around all day to go for a dark walk through the restinga – a coastal dune ecosystem in the protected Reserva Caruara, a few hundred kilometres north of Rio city.

Rio is one of the most famous nightlife cities on Earth – really, not the obvious choice when thinking about dark sky destinations. But what I’d failed to realise before going there is that Rio is both the world-famous city and the large state surrounding it.

Slightly larger than Denmark, the state of Rio de Janeiro is a long corridor replete with low mountains, endangered Atlantic Forest and coastlines where sea turtles and other marine life thrive. In the centre is Desengano State Park, the first dark sky park to be certified in all of Latin America, back in 2021. It is an island of surviving darkness surrounded by blazing urban hot spots.

My host was Marcelo de Olivera Souza, a dark sky advocate, an astronomer and a teacher. He is frequently featured on Brazilian TV and radio talking about the stars. He’s a regular guest on several astronomy podcasts. And he was instrumental in Desengano receiving its dark sky certification. I first met Marcelo online in 2022, when I interviewed him for DarkSky. I can only describe him as a jolly man, full of energy, quick to laugh and exceedingly generous. After that Zoom conversation, he invited me to come to Brazil someday to see their dark skies, and so here I was, nearly two years later.

I took the shin guards, slid them over my shoes and velcroed them at the back. They came up past my knees and felt flimsy and well-used. It seemed like a snake’s fangs could probably penetrate them, but I supposed any barrier was better than none. The risk of facing a Brazilian pit viper was just one of many ‘what tf am I doing’ moments that I’ve had in my dark sky travels.

(Pre-order my upcoming book, Nightfaring, for more!)

Reserva Caruara is not part of the dark sky park – it’s much farther east, along the coast outside of Campos dos Goytacazes, the city where Marcelo and his family live. A private reserve, it covers 40 km² of protected coastline, dunes and wetland, where they've catalogued hundreds of species of plant and animal life, including a resident herd of capybara and native sea turtles.

Thanks to Marcelo’s impeccable planning, I got to be there during a baby sea turtle release. Seeing these incredible hatchlings up close was a life highlight.

It was the turtles that got conservationists at the reserve interested in better lighting. Sea turtles are extremely sensitive to light because they use the light of the Moon to nest on shore, and when hatchlings find their way back to the sea. They easily mistake artificial light for moonlight and wander in the wrong direction, often to their deaths.

Marcelo has been working with the reserve to implement best lighting practices in the hopes of having the reserve someday certified as a dark sky place. The lighting is low-level, warm-toned and shielded, so it doesn’t glare out from the buildings or disturb the wildlife. This also makes the atmosphere around the visitor centre quite peaceful and beautiful at night.

After we had suited up in shin guards and loads of bug repellent, we followed a sand trail, which led away from the visitor centre, past a small pond where two capybara were quietly munching on grass. After some minutes walking single file through the dark, soundtracked by far-off waves, we reached a wide path between sea shrubs taller than me.

I was sweating profusely, for it was the type of humidity that you can see lingering in the air and creating a hazy filter over everything. The stars were out above us, but they were also thinly veiled in moisture and a fine lace of cloud, so that the starlight was blurry and soft. We stood there for a few minutes until fireflies began lighting up the shrubs – speckles of soft orange and white flickers – all of them signposts for a date and a mate.

I didn’t get any snake bites, just mosquitoes.

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The following day, Marcelo, along with his lovely wife and two daughters, drove me to Santa Maria Madalena – the gateway town for Desengano Dark Sky Park, and then up into the mountains nearby to a small lodge called Pousada Verbicaro.

Run by a local family, it’s one of the best places to stay for stargazing, just outside the official boundary of the dark sky area. Marcelo had worked with the owners to adjust all of their lighting to protect the starry skies, and it worked. By the poolside that evening, we looked through Marcelo’s telescope and took photos of the stars rising over the lush jungle valley.

Happily, this year, Pousada Verbicaro was certified as the first Dark Sky Lodging outside of the US (and one of the first anywhere in the world). A converted mountain house, it feels like a real home, with a large living room, photos and tapestries on the walls, picture windows overlooking the jungle, and simple, comfortable rooms where you can totally switch off and be surrounded by nature. They can also arrange jeep tours, guided hikes and tree climbing experiences.

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Practical details

Reserva Caruara is located near the seaside town of São João da Barra and runs a regular visitor programme, including sea turtle releases and walks in the restinga.

Pousada Verbicaro is located just north of Santa Maria Madalena, near the edge of Desengano Dark Sky Park.

Tour guide and dark sky advocate Cristiana Rizzetto leads adventure tours and night excursions from Santa Maria Madalena.

The city of Campos dos Goytacazes, the regional transport hub, is about 300km or a four-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro. The best way to get around is to hire a car, but regular buses also go from Rio’s Terminal Rodoviário Novo Rio to Campos – check autoviacao1001.com.br for schedules.

Welcome to my new publication, Nightfall and Elsewhere, a newsletter-magazine in which I will write about all the topics that are important to me: darkness, night, travel, landscapes, cultures, history, science, the stars, art, music, our planet Earth and the ways that all of these intersect. What you will find here will certainly include travel writing – dispatches from trips I’ve recently taken and explorations of unsung places near me in the UK, such as historical astronomy sites or nocturnal events – plus musings on topics I’m currently researching, photographs from around the world and more. I may also dive into completely random subjects from time to time and hope you’ll accompany me into these occasional rabbit holes. I think side quests make life much more exciting.

In January 2026, I’m excited to announce that my first memoir, Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness, will be published in the UK (Simon & Schuster – preorder in the UK here), followed by its US/Canada release in March 2026 (Grand Central – preorder in North America here).

Through 2026 and beyond, I’ll be hosting talks, lectures, signings and dark sky events, both in person and online, and I’m delighted to give my readers and subscribers here early access to those events. After book launch, paid subscribers may get a behind-the-scenes look at the many stories in the book, photographs from my research trips and other peeks behind the curtain. Plus, more exciting things are on the horizon, including the opportunity to come with me on an international dark sky adventure.

I love hearing from you all, dear friends and readers, and I welcome your suggestions about places, topics and ideas that you think I should write about here on Nightfall and Elsewhere.

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Thanks for joining me on this journey into the darkness and beyond.

Image by Bettymaya Foott