Wise acknowledges that Northumberland needs to do more to capitalize on its scarce resource and believes the region needs a couple more observatories to ensure that visitors will see what they came for. A £14m national landscape discovery center, which he describes as the north’s answer to the Eden Project, will have an observatory when it is completed in a couple of years. Fildes has grand designs. He is planning Britain’s first “astrovillage,” one that would house the largest public observatory in the world and boast a 100-seat auditorium, a 100-seat planetarium, a one-meter aperture telescope, and radiomagnetic and solar telescopes. The multimillion-pound project would feature a hotel and draw in 100,000 people a year, four times the number currently able to use the observatory. Fildes is cryptic about his backers but believes the astrovillage will be a reality by 2018.
Why does Wise believe Northumberland needs more observatories?
So that more visitors will be able to view the dark skies So that the government will invest £14 million in the region So that 100,000 people can visit Northumberland by 2018 So that the UK can attract more tourists from other countries