Dark Skies

It seems like lately every day/week/month has some obscure celebration connected to it. It makes it very hard to keep up and I almost slipped noticing that this weekend wraps up the end of International Dark Skies Week!

Never heard of it? Well it celebrates one of my favorite things: star viewing and also fights to limit light pollution.  It's amazing how much light we emit into the night sky. It's not just places like Times Square or Vegas that blocks star viewing it's also coming from your own yard and street.  Some might say so what if you can't see big burning balls of gas trillions of miles away but light pollution also is threatening the future of some nocturnal species. Some easy things you can do to help is installing lighting fixtures that reduce skyward light emissions. 

such a difference lights make

 I'll never forget camping with my 6th graders in a ridge of the Appalachian mountains and being able to actually see the Milky Way! Most of the students living in the city had never really seen any stars. We were all in awe of how gorgeous the night sky was. It was amazing to be able to actually see the stars and planets in nature rather than having use my planetarium to show the constellations. 

Doesn't everyone have an inflatable planetarium?

Now in case you missed you missed celebrating International Dark Skies Week, fear not Clevelanders you are in luck. Did you know that just a short drive away is 1 of only 22 certified dark sky parks in the world?

Observatory Park is just about an hour east and is part of the Geauga county park system in Montville.  It's open daily 6AM-11PM with some programming throughout the week and extended hours during astronomical events. Its a green space with cute little walking trail of the solar system, telescope pads/electrical hook ups and special hooded red lights to help with night time viewing.

view of the buildings

 As you would expect since it is a sanctioned dark zone there is not much around the area. It's also a fairly small park, it's main purpose is for night viewing so there are limited picnic tables and trails.  Don't expect to find much in way of restaurants and night life in a 15 mile radius. Observatory park is conveniently located within a 20 minutes or so drive from a lot of  the wineries.

 W and I finally made the trek to the park after taking a wine trail tour. A win- win combination of daytime events.  We made it to park just near dusk with plans to stay for nighttime viewing but a massive thunderstorm cut our trip short. I will say the bathroom building was a great little place to wait out tornadic weather!

check out those angry clouds

 Every time I've attempted to make the journey to Observatory Park at night it's been cloudy or stormy weather. Kind of like this week the Lyrid meteor shower is peaking and it's expected to rain Ugh oh well I'm looking forward to the next time I can visit the park and until then I'll just have to enjoy the shows at local planetariums.