This is one of my Dad's favorite authors - (Lord) Martin Rees.

He's also a mover and shaker in one of my own pet subjects: dark skies. Indeed, outside UNESCO was a mini-observatory which got me thinking about how Luskentyre Beach on the Isle of Harris could do with a telescope.

The Outer Hebrides has the darkest skies I ever did see in Europe. While I lived on nearby Lewis in the mid 1990s, I was lucky enough to see two comets in an area with little light pollution.