Wise agrees that Northumberland needs to do more to take advantage of its scarce resource. He believes the region needs a couple more observatories to ensure that visitors will see what they came for. A new £14m national landscape discovery center will have an observatory when it is completed in a couple of years. Fildes has big ambitions. He is planning Britain’s first “astrovillage,” one that would contain the largest public observatory in the world and have a 100-seat auditorium, a 100-seat planetarium, a one-meter aperture telescope, and radiomagnetic and solar telescopes. The multimillion-pound project would also have a hotel and draw in 100,000 people a year, four times the number currently able to use the observatory. Fildes believes the astrovillage will be a reality by 2018.
What is Fildes’ ambition?
Creating Britain’s first “astrovillage” Replacing the observatory’s radiomagnetic and solar telescopes Creating a £14-million national landscape discovery center Starting a network of observatories around the worl