Later today I’m heading west, along with Senior Editor Michael Bakich, to a desolate area southeast of Tucson, Arizona, to visit the Arizona Sky Village (ASV).
Michael and I will spend the next few days observing, observing, and observing. We’ll be fortunate enough to be guests of Gene Turner, founder of the ASV. The Arizona Sky Village is a development project near Portal, Arizona, tucked at the base of the Chiricahua Mountains, and it offers a community of sorts where amateur astronomers are building houses and constructing observatories under one of the darkest skies on the planet. Check out our video tour of ASV.
As anyone reading this knows, dark skies play a big part in our hobby. And living in Milwaukee, you just don’t get them — ever. So the periodic trip to a very dark sky allows us editors to make some really useful observations that will form the backbone of significant stories in the magazine over the coming months. And we’ll be bringing you daily blogs sharing our activities with telescopes, stars, and daytime desert, starting tomorrow. The Astronomy road show is rolling westward.
Stay tuned!