Astronomer Tyler Nordgren is on a quest: to visit 12 national parks in one year, and investigate their connection with the cosmos.
He visited Big Bend National Park in west Texas, and his experiences there are revealed on Emily’s blog at The Planetary Society. He has a picture there… well. Juts go and see for yourself. This is a few minutes well worth spending.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. | |
 | Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. |
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
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March 25th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Sadly, I wonder how much longer we will be able to get to places where the sky is truly dark, away from any light pollution. I was dismayed when I went out one night last year with my telescope, here in Squamish. We are a small town just north of Vancouver. I went down by the river, which I thought would be the darkest spot in town. I was dismayed as I tried to observe and could see nothing except the orange glow of sodium lights.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Awesome. Great photo and article. Seeing the expanse of the Milky Way from a truly dark sight is something everyone needs to put their lives into a little ‘galactic perspective’!
As luck would have it, Earth Hour is this weekend, and it’s a chance to promote lights off and stars up! Get out your scopes, tell the neighbors to shut off their lights and let them line up at your eyepiece.
http://www.earthhour.org
March 25th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
‘m sure my neighbor will appreciate the lines of people staring through my scope at the window. There’s nothing else to look at here since the sky is usually cloudy at this time of year on the Coast (West) of BC.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Best naked-eye viewing of the Milky Way I have seen was in mid-August, ‘97, in Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest, at a campsite called Moosalamoo. It must have been a new moon, and I was forced to retreat away from the main camping area to allow my two companions to have a lover’s quarrel (we were three ex-college students traversing the country in a VW van, and my friends had decided to go with the “benefits” option immediately before essentially moving in with each other in a space roughly the size of a large freezer. Awkward hardly describes it).
Anyway, I walked a hundred yards or so up to the top of a big hill behind the campground, and laid down in a little clearing. I looked up, and realized how the ancients were forced to invent mythologies and see magical things in the night sky. Had I been utterly ignorant of modern knowledge, I would have invented a religion on the spot. Seeing the bands of dust, and the bright regions spilling, like, well, a river across the sky, remains one of my most treasured memories.
I’m almost ashamed to say that over the next ten weeks, my companions and I became rather blase about the views we were able to obtain from the various campgrounds we visited. We still looked up, but until we were forced back into urban life, we forgot the rarity of what we had been taking for granted.
Seeing this post, and reading the words of Mr. Nordgren, remind me that I must make every effort to let my children see where they live before it is impossible to do so.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I cant help but think of one of my fondest camping memories. I was in the Canyon Lands of Utah. I had gone to sleep under a waxing moon. The view of course was spectacular even with the moonlight reflecting off the canyon walls. By a great stroke of luck I woke about 3 am to completely dark skies and one of the best views I have ever witnessed of the Milkyway. It was still so light from just starlight that I could nearly go for a hike. It took me an hour to go back to sleep, as I just could’nt stop looking and wondering at the beauty.
This was’nt my first experience with dark skies but it was one of the most memorable. I have been in the Big Bend as well but did not have the good fortune to be camping while there. I did however witness ball lighting during a thunderstorm in the Big Bend and that was most impressive. Nice link BA!
March 26th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
We are so afraid of the dark that we are going to light this planet up so much that at some point we won’t be able to see a single thing in the night sky. The moon? Maybe.
Here is what we need more of before it is too late:
http://www.darksky.org/