From the car park in the foothills of the Range of the Awful Hand, it is a short walk to what may be the darkest place in the country. Drive up here after sunset and you are unlikely to set eyes on another soul, yet the site is famous among a small group of enthusiasts who come here in the black of night to stand, watch and wonder.

The patch of ground in the imposing row of mountains is surrounded by 300 square miles of moorland, woods and lochs that form the rugged wilderness of Galloway Forest Park in southern Scotland, and in a few weeks, officers at the forest will take steps towards making it Europe's first official dark sky park.

It is the profound lack of light that makes the area worthy of recognition and such a spectacular place to look at nature. The spot is so remote that on a cloudless night it offers an unrivalled view of the heavens: a rare chance to see shooting stars and the distant Andromeda galaxy, the aurora borealis and stellar nurseries where suns are born to warm alien planets.

Only two other parks in the world, one in Pennsylvania, the other in Utah, have been recognised by the International Dark-Sky Association, a US-based organisation that seeks to preserve and celebrate the darkest corners of the Earth. To earn dark sky park status, officials in Galloway will submit digital photographs of the night sky taken through a fisheye lens. Their application must be supported by readings from light meters at different points in the park, and a list of measures that are being taken within the forest to prevent lights in and around the handful of farm buildings from spilling upwards into the sky and ruining the view.

Registering the park in Galloway will be a British highlight of Unesco's International Year of Astronomy (IYA) in 2009. If the park's accreditation is successful, others including Exmoor National Park, the Brecon Beacons and the Peak District are expected to follow suit.

Interest in preserving areas where the glow of the city has yet to encroach on the night sky follows work by the Campaign for Dark Skies, a group set up by the British Astronomical Society in 1989 to highlight the growing issue of light pollution. With increasing urbanisation come better-lit streets, roads and buildings, which send light needlessly up into the sky, obscuring all but the brightest stars. According to some estimates, the amount of light that leaks into space costs around £110m a year.

"If you go out in an urban street and look up at night, you might see 50, maybe 100 stars at best. But come to our park and when you look up and let your eyes adjust, there are so many stars you can't count them. You see shooting stars, satellites and the Milky Way, with its billions of stars. You don't even need a high-powered telescope: a pair of binoculars is brilliant," said Keith Muir, recreation officer at Galloway Forest Park.

Steven Owens, an astronomer who is coordinating the UK's involvement in the IYA, said: "We've become a very urban population, and in doing so we've cut ourselves off from experiences people have had for hundreds and thousands of years.

"People have been looking up at the night sky, telling stories and passing on myths and legends for the entirety of recorded human history. But when we moved into cities, we lost that very deep connection with the universe. In setting up dark sky parks, we're trying to reconnect people with nature."

The darkness of the night sky is judged on what is called the Bortle scale, where night-time illumination over London ranks as a 10, while that over an oil rig in the Pacific ranks as one. Galloway scores around three on the scale, making its skies the darkest in Europe.

Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, said designated dark sky parks were needed to put the brakes on the rapidly vanishing natural beauty of the night sky. "This is a part of our heritage that we're losing. If we concreted over the countryside and bulldozed the forests, there would be an outcry, but this has sneaked up on us, and people don't realise what we are doing. The night sky is an amazing spectacle that 90% of the population doesn't get to see," he said.

Next year, astronomers led by Dan Hillier at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh aim to set up partnerships between local parks and astronomers to raise awareness of stargazing across the UK for those without easy access to the more remote corners of the country.

The best time to view the night sky, especially in Scotland, is in the winter when the nights are darker and longer. Amateur astronomers recommend using websites and magazines to find out what will be in the sky and when. "You might be able to see Venus and Jupiter on the horizon at sunset. And if you go somewhere perfectly dark and look just beneath the belt of Orion the Hunter, you'll see a fuzzy blob. It might not look much, but it's a stellar nursery where new stars are born," said Owens.

After midnight on 3 January and before dawn the next day, Britain will have a prime view of the Quadrantid meteor shower, when astronomers expect to see around 100 shooting stars an hour. The brilliant streaks of light are caused by the Earth hurtling through giant clouds of dust particles, which burn up in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.