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Field trip to Idaho!
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Has Achieved Nirvana
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I want to show you something — a remarkable view you cannot see until long after sunset, unless you stand in the vast middle of nowhere, without your phone or your Netflix series or your irrational fears of the wilderness just beyond the edge of your flashlight’s beam. Turn off the light.

The silhouette of the Sawtooth Range looms on the horizon, sheltering a well of Central Idaho from the sky-glow of distant civilizations. Your eyes adjust to the dark and the vista above draws them up to a black dome dazzled by many thousands of points of light. You wade into its depths, into its apparent three-dimensionality. There are galaxies behind stars behind planets. A single meteor streaks across your peripheral vision and there, a satellite, a mere speck of light, tracks a steady path along its orbit. Wonder buoys familiarity. You know this place you’ve never really seen before. You sense in it a kind of origin, and under the reassuring arm of the Milky Way, you feel recognized.

Few people live beneath — or have seen — a night this star-rich. Light pollution affects more than 80 percent of the world’s population in some way. Excessive artificial lighting bathes thousands of cities in radiance that obscures all but the brightest celestial objects. Night skies appear muddy and nearly starless.

But life needs darkness. Unnaturally bright nights can lead to depression and insomnia in humans. Brighter nights interfere with nocturnal animals’ hunting, foraging, and mating. City lights throw off the navigational systems of migrating turtles, are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of birds annually, as well as declining populations of insects fatally drawn to the gleam.

Preserving the few remaining dark places in the world is the mission of the Tucson, Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). For more than 30 years, it’s pushed against the sprawl of artificial lighting, and its efforts are beginning to pay off. Today, it’s reviewing a record number of applications from locations worldwide requesting to be certified as a dark-sky place by meeting criteria that include public education and steps to reduce light pollution.

Are these places really that dark? To find out, I spent a few evenings in July 2019 in the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, a 1,416-square-mile patch inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. It’s one of 14 IDA-certified dark-sky reserves in the world and the only one in the United States. “It’s in the handful of places left in the continental U.S. where I would describe the quality of the night sky as being nearly pristine,” says John Barentine, IDA’s director of public policy. Later, I spoke with some of the people dedicated to studying and preserving dark skies and potentially capitalizing on them to boost rural economies.


https://expmag.com/2020/01/sta...source=pocket-newtab


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training



 
Posts: 37794 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Has Achieved Nirvana
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I haven’t been to Idaho in some 20 years, and for various reasons I hope never to return.

That said, I’ve been to Death Valley, possibly the darkest place there is in the continental US.

It’s magical at night.


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Life is short. Play with your dog.

 
Posts: 34852 | Location: Hooterville, OH | Registered: 23 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Minor Deity
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Yes..the desert sky at night is quite awe inspiring. Anza Borrego was great.


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"A mob is a place where people go to get away from their conscience" Atticus Finch

 
Posts: 13525 | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pinta & the Santa Maria
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The best night sky I've ever seen was in the middle of nowhere in Australia's Northern Territory (about 4 hours from Alice Springs). Amazing--Magellenic clouds and the southern cross. Absolutely beautiful.
 
Posts: 35367 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The sky over the Gulf of Mexico was amazing.
It was after a scary storm cleared.
It is no wonder the ancients looked at the sky as the place of the gods.


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Several people have eaten my cooking and survived.

 
Posts: 25677 | Location: Still living at 9000 feet in the High Rockies of Colorado | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Serial origamist
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The northern parts of the Washington coast get dark. There's a mountain range between the coast and any city of size.

One year we were at Ruby Beach and after the sun went down we could not see a darned thing. A dozen of us and nobody thought to bring a flashlight. We literally felt our way the quarter mile up from the beach to the parking lot.


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Posts: 30030 | Registered: 27 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Has Achieved Nirvana
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Originally posted by pianojuggler:
The northern parts of the Washington coast get dark. There's a mountain range between the coast and any city of size.

One year we were at Ruby Beach and after the sun went down we could not see a darned thing. A dozen of us and nobody thought to bring a flashlight. We literally felt our way the quarter mile up from the beach to the parking lot.


Today there would be 12 or more phones with a flashlight app,


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Several people have eaten my cooking and survived.

 
Posts: 25677 | Location: Still living at 9000 feet in the High Rockies of Colorado | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I visited Cherry Springs State Park in north central Pennsylvania last September and saw much more of the sky than I'm accustomed to seeing, although there was moonlight the night I was there which limited some of the seeing possibilities.

Light pollution has become more and more prevalent in recent years. I used to observe the Milky Way quite clearly on the farm where I grew up. I went out to a hilltop there a few years ago and couldn't see very much at all.

I must say that the best views of the night sky I ever saw were from the deck of the freighter that my wife and I sailed in on a trip from Brazil to the USA. At night, all outside lights on the freighter were extinguished except for the running lights on the bow and stern and those were shrouded from view, being intended only to be visible to other ships that we might encounter. The stars looked like bright diamonds scattered on black velvet with the Milky Way in all its glory running from horizon to horizon.

Big Al


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Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.

Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro

A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ

 
Posts: 7381 | Location: Western PA | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
czarina
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I skied up into the sawtooth range with a group of women one year. Stayed in yurts. The best views from any outhouse ever-- it was a trench dug in the edge of a mountain with a toilet seat thrown over it. No walls or roof. I dont particularly remember the night skies that trip. far more unforgettable were the stars one early August night beside a small alpine tarn , up at 10,000 feet, in the Spanish Peaks near Bozeman, MT. I caught the Perseids that night and the sky was crystal clear. The comets were balls of fire so close, it seemed like they were streaking across my cheeks.


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fear is the thief of dreams

 
Posts: 21305 | Registered: 18 May 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pinta & the Santa Maria
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Glad to "see" you posting, Pique--hopefully this is a sign that you are doing better. One week down!

I've never been in a good place to see the Perseids. It sounds incredible.
 
Posts: 35367 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Minor Deity
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I didn't know Pique had already gone in. Hope you are doing better than you expected.


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"A mob is a place where people go to get away from their conscience" Atticus Finch

 
Posts: 13525 | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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