Who turned out the lights?

Unlike most people, I phrase the title of this post in a tone of gratitude and happiness.  I am very much an amateur star-gazer (the ones in the sky, not the ones down the street).  I don't even own a telescope . . yet.

I had the great joy in October to travel to Tonopah, NV (yeah, I also stopped in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and San Francisco) and had tears in my eyes when i drove 10 miles into the desert and saw nothing but stars in the night sky!  This organization is a "one-stop" shop for all things dark-sky, including some suggestions on destinations under the Policy/Programs menu.

One of the stories posted at the MSNBC website is about Death Valley National Park's efforts to make as much of their park a dark sky park as possible.  From what I read, it looks as if they will be successful once they make some modifications to their own lighting.  Blocking the lights from nearby Las Vegas will be a huge challenge, though.  Even if Vegas' lights cannot be blocked, the park stands a good chance of having a majority of its acreage set aside as dark-sky friendly.

On TV: I caught a showing of the newly released movie Christmas on Mars last night.  Please watch this sober or, if you choose to watch this in an altered state, bring a friend as it is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. 

That said, I LOVE weird movies! 

Like some of Ed Wood's movies, I could tell everyone tried their best with this movie and poured a lot of heart into it.  If Sundance is not airing it and you're not willing to risk the $10 to buy it off of iTunes, I hope it gets shown it somewhere on TV once a year around Christmas time.