Devils River State Natural Area Named Texas' First Dark Sky Sanctuary

[TexasTowelie]

Vincent Lock/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
The Milky Way, as seen from Big Bend.


Not all darkness is created equal. In a place like Big Bend, the night sky reaches depths not present closer to a big city. That’s also true of Devils River State Natural Area, located about 60 miles north of Del Rio. It’s the newest dark sky sanctuary – so designated by the International Dark-Sky Association.

Adam Dalton, program manager for the International Dark-Sky Association, or IDA, says that though you can tell the darkness of one part of the sky, relative to another, with the naked eye, IDA uses a combined quantitative and qualitative methodology.

“We use a device called the sky quality meter, which essentially measures the sky to see how dark it is. . . in a scale called magnitudes per arcsecond. The scale goes from roughly 16 to 22 and each move of 1 on the scale is actually a logarithmic change,” Dalton says.

This means the sky is 10 times darker at 21 than 20, and it’s 100 times darker at 22.

Read more: http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/devils-river-state-natural-area-named-texas-third-dark-sky-sanctuary/

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Woo hoo for astronomy ! nt

[Paladin]

2. I saw skies like that in the Hill Country, when I was a child.

Many years ago.

[metalbot]

3. You can still see phenomenal skies in Hill Country

The Austin Astronomy Club has once a month star parties in a state park off of Lake Buchanan, about an hour from Austin. I was astonished at how little light pollution they have out there.

[Paladin]

4. Thanks for the information. (nt)