“It’s just mind-blowing,” says the astronomer and teacher Jo Richardson. She is standing in Exmoor national park talking about Saturn, the first planet she ever saw through a telescope.

But it is not the cosmic colour of the planet that Richardson is drawn to, nor its mysteries – it is the vastness. “Saturn, on average, is 800m miles away,” she says, the equivalent to travelling the circumference of the Earth 32,000 times. “You can see it through a telescope here. That’s just nuts.”

Richardson is on Exmoor to spread the word. She is here for the 10th dark skies festival, celebrating the park as Europe’s first designated international dark skies reserve. Throughout October, people travelled from across England’s south-west to see the wonder of the night sky and learn about space, guided by astronomers and ecologists from the national park.

Bringing people to the darkness of Exmoor encourages them to consider the light pollution that prevents them seeing the cosmic show at home, Richardson says.…