Westerton, County Durham
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Westerton, County Durham
Westerton is a village in County Durham, England. In the 2001 census Westerton had a population of 44. It is situated between Bishop Auckland and Spennymoor. It sits on top of a hill which is one of the highest points in County Durham, and is the location of an observatory built for Thomas Wright, who was the first person to suggest that the Milky Way consisted of a flattened disk of star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...s. The observatory is known today as "Wright's Folly". References External links Villages in County Durham {{Durham-geo-stub ...
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County Durham
County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly â€About North East England. Retrieved 30 November 2007. The ceremonial county spawned from the historic County Palatine of Durham in 1853. In 1996, the county gained part of the abolished ceremonial county of Cleveland.Lieutenancies Act 1997
. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
The county town is the of

United Kingdom Census 2001
A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194. The 2001 UK census was organised by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). Detailed results by region, council area, ward and output area are available from their respective websites. Organisation Similar to previous UK censuses, the 2001 census was organised by the three statistical agencies, ONS, GROS, and NISRA, and coordinated at the national level by the Office for National Statistics. The Orders in Council to conduct the census, specifying the people and information to be included in the census, were made under the authority of the Census Act 1920 in Great Britain, and the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 in Northern Ireland. In England and Wales these re ...
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Bishop Auckland
Bishop Auckland () is a market town and civil parish at the confluence of the River Wear and the River Gaunless in County Durham, northern England. It is northwest of Darlington and southwest of Durham. Much of the town's early history surrounds the Bishops of Durham and the establishment of Auckland Castle's predecessor, a hunting lodge, which became the main residence of Durham Bishops. This is reflected in the first part of the town's name. During the Industrial Revolution, the town grew rapidly as coal mining took hold as an important industry. Decline in the coal mining industry during the late twentieth century has changed the largest sector of employment to manufacturing. Since 1 April 2009, the town's local authority has been Durham County Council. The unitary authority replaced the previous Wear Valley District and Durham County councils. The parliamentary constituency of Bishop Auckland is named after the town. The town is twinned with the French town of Ivry-sur ...
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Spennymoor
Spennymoor is a town and civil parish in County Durham (district), County Durham, England. It is south of the River Wear and is south of Durham, England, Durham. The civil parish includes the villages of Kirk Merrington, Middlestone Moor, Byers Green and Tudhoe. History Origins The land on which Spennymoor now stands was once a vast expanse of moorland covered with thorn and whin bushes (Spenny Moor). In 1336 its Toponymy, place-name was recorded as ''Spendingmor''. The name is probably derived from the Old English or Old Norse ''spenning'' and ''mÅr'', meaning a moor with a fence or enclosure. Another theory of the place-name's origin is from the Latin ''spina'', meaning thorn (possibly from the Roman influence at Binchester) combined with the Old English or Old Norse ''mÅr''. CE Jackson, in his ''Place Names of Durham'' published in 1916 suggested a combination of the Old Norse ''spaan'' with Old English ''mar'', meaning the moor named after the shingle-hut erected thereon. ...
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Thomas Wright (astronomer)
Thomas Wright (22 September 171125 February 1786) was an English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect and garden designer. He was the first to describe the shape of the Milky Way and to speculate that faint nebulæ were distant galaxies. Early life Wright was born at Byers Green in County Durham being the third son of John and Margaret Wright of Pegg's Poole House. His father was a carpenter. He was educated at home as he suffered from speech impediment and then at King James I Academy. In 1725 he entered into clock-making apprenticeship to Bryan Stobart of Bishop Auckland, continuing to study on his own. He also took courses on mathematics and navigation at a free school in the parish of Gateshead founded by Dr. Theophilus Pickering. Then, he went to London to study mathematical instrument-making with Heath and Sisson and made a trial sea voyage to Amsterdam. In 1730, he set up a school in Sunderland, where he taught mathematics and navigation. He later moved ...
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Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term ''Milky Way'' is a translation of the Latin ', from the Greek ('), meaning "milky circle". From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with an estimated D25 isophotal diameter of , but only about 1,000 light years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulg ...
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Star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sky, night, but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed stars, fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterism (astronomy), asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye, all within the Milky Way galaxy. A star's life star formation, begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Its stellar ...
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