History

Almost without exception, children are fascinated by stars (and dinosaurs of course!)

I was lucky enough to spend my early childhood years in the 1960s when, even though I lived on the outskirts of a town, the view of the night sky was literally several orders of magnitude better than it is now due to the lack of serious light pollution.

My parents didn't have a car, so all of our family trips out were made by bus, and I have vivid memories of the long walk home from the bus stop, holding Mum or Dad's hand, staring up into a huge black sky, transfixed by the thousands of stars on display. I remember seeing what looked like a cloud across the blackness, not realising at the time that I was actually looking into the disc of our own galaxy, The Milky Way.

Like many people, as I got a little older I forgot about stars for a while, and whilst I was busy not looking upwards at night, light pollution began to gain a serious foothold: street lights, factory lights, office lights, public building flood-lights, security-lights in back gardens etc... all let artificial light spill up into the sky such that in many places, it can be almost as difficult to see the stars at night as it is during the day.

Fortunately, I happened to be out in the countryside on one particularly clear night and I happened to look up: I was amazed at what I saw and the childhood memories came flooding back. I was hooked again. I remembered my 1960's trip to The London Planetarium, now sadly gone but at the time, one of the very few such facilities in the whole of England. However, the discovery that there now existed mobile planetaria was a revelation to me: interested parties could now have the stars 'delivered to their door', without the added expense of a coach trip to a fixed planetarium (and, for schools, the ensuing loss of lesson time).

'The Black Hole' came into being in 2000 and I began taking leave from my day-job as an architect to visit local schools, bringing just a little of the wonder of the night sky to children who sadly have very often had no experience of a dark sky filled with stars.

My day-job was credit-crunched away from me in early 2009 since when 'The Black Hole' has grown from a very enjoyable 'paying hobby' to an equally enjoyable full-time job

... probably the best job in the Universe?