I'm with you on this, my friend. For years - when I lived in the South Bay - I'd go outside late, late at night, hoping to see some of the latest meteor shower. Almost always, the sky looked like a fluorescent light in an office building. Maybe you'd see the moon, maybe Venus, and that would be it.
One year, I took the daughters, their boyfriends, and several dogs, and we went to a house rental by the Anzo-Borrego desert. The area is an official Dark Sky area - no streetlights, no outside lights on the house, no billboards, nothing to take away from the darkness of the sky. We slept until around 1:30, then got up and sat on lounge chairs looking at the sky. I had never seen the Milky Way before, and at first I thought it was some light cloud cover. By dawn I had seen around 60 meteors - some a brief zip, some flashing across the sky for several seconds.
We plan to do the same thing again this year - sometime in the fall, hopefully during a meteor shower. It's awfully cool.
Make a VRBO reservation today and make the Anzo-Borrego Desert star gazing trip this fall. Our opportunities to witness these awe-inspiring wonders are fast becoming fewer, and we must do our best to avoid "I should have..." regrets in our final days.
We need to fight to keep these night skies starry. Too often, unnecessary illumination wipes out what most of us can see.
I'm with you on this, my friend. For years - when I lived in the South Bay - I'd go outside late, late at night, hoping to see some of the latest meteor shower. Almost always, the sky looked like a fluorescent light in an office building. Maybe you'd see the moon, maybe Venus, and that would be it.
One year, I took the daughters, their boyfriends, and several dogs, and we went to a house rental by the Anzo-Borrego desert. The area is an official Dark Sky area - no streetlights, no outside lights on the house, no billboards, nothing to take away from the darkness of the sky. We slept until around 1:30, then got up and sat on lounge chairs looking at the sky. I had never seen the Milky Way before, and at first I thought it was some light cloud cover. By dawn I had seen around 60 meteors - some a brief zip, some flashing across the sky for several seconds.
We plan to do the same thing again this year - sometime in the fall, hopefully during a meteor shower. It's awfully cool.
Make a VRBO reservation today and make the Anzo-Borrego Desert star gazing trip this fall. Our opportunities to witness these awe-inspiring wonders are fast becoming fewer, and we must do our best to avoid "I should have..." regrets in our final days.