"On Rum, Europe’s newest dark-sky sanctuary, the island’s 40 residents have learned to embrace darkness."
"Rum, a diamond-shaped island off the western coast of Scotland, is home to 40 people. Most of the island — 40 square miles of mountains, peatland and heath — is a national nature reserve, with residents mainly nestled around Kinloch Bay to the east. What the Isle of Rum lacks is artificial illumination. There are no streetlights, light-flooded sports fields, neon signs, industrial sites or anything else casting a glow against the night sky. On a cold January day, the sun sets early and rises late, yielding to a blackness that envelopes the island, a blackness so deep that the light of stars manifests suddenly at dusk and the glow of the moon is bright enough to navigate by.
For this reason, Rum was recently named Europe’s newest dark-sky sanctuary, a status that DarkSky International, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing light pollution, has granted to only 22 other places in the world. With the ever-increasing use of artificial lighting at night, places where people can gaze at the deep, ancient light of the universe are increasingly rare. Rum’s designation is the result of a long, meticulous bid by the Isle of Rum Community Trust. The effort was led by Alex Mumford, the island’s former tourism manager, and Lesley Watt, Rum’s reserve officer, with the support of Steven Gray and James Green, two astronomers who started Cosmos Planetarium, a mobile theater offering immersive virtual tours of the night sky. Rum “stands for something greater,” Mr. Mumford said, and aspires to be “a haven for others to experience the darkness and the Milky Way.”
A seven-mile walk from Kinloch through the wild and empty heart of the island leads to a Greek-style mausoleum, built in the 19th century, above Harris Bay on the west side of Rum. Locals regard it as the best spot on the island to take in the night sky; on a cloudy night with no moon, one resident said, “you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.” But this night was clear, and stars and meteors wheeled spectacularly overhead as the Milky Way drew a glistening smudge above the brooding mountains, Askival and Hallival. Venus, Saturn and Jupiter stood in a line above the mausoleum’s sandstone pillars."
Photographs by Nicholas J. R. White and text by Kat Hill for the New York Times February 24, 2025.
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