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Winerama continued

Winerama continued

Winerama continued

Wine tasting under the trees at Herron Bluff Odyssey day 18 finds us on the road again to Eastern Washington on the edge of the Tri-Cities region. Situated at the confluence of the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers in Eastern Washington, the Tri-Cities comprise three closely linked cities in the southeastern part of the state: Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland. Our destination was right in the midst of that. Benton City is more rural and known for its' vineyards and wineries. T

7 days ago1 min read

Land of a Thousand Wineries

Land of a Thousand Wineries

Land of a Thousand Wineries

One of several wineries in Caldwell, ID Day 16 and our next stop is Caldwell, Idaho to meet up with a couple of good friends there. We had a couple of these stops, one here and another in Montana, to break things up a bit. This entire region from eastern Idaho up through eastern Washington and BC Canada is filled with wineries. We visited several on our trip including here in Caldwell ID. I think most of these smaller wineries never make it into stores where we typically buy

Jul 51 min read

Edge of the Universe

Edge of the Universe

Edge of the Universe

Milky Way core taken from our campsite at Crump Lake near Plush, Oregon Day 14 and we are heading out from Spring Creek, Nevada to a remote region of the Earth about 330 miles away. Yes we actually do have an outback here in the US and it’s located in the State of Oregon! Encompassing 2.5 million acres, the Oregon Outback is a vast region of high desert in South Central and Southeastern Oregon. The skies above the Outback are among the darkest in the world. According to the L

Jul 33 min read

The Bortle dark-sky scale (usually referred to as simply the Bortle scale) is a nine-level numeric scale that measures the night sky's brightness of a particular location. It characterizes the observability of celestial objects, taking into account the interference caused by light pollution. Amateur astronomer John E. Bortle created the scale and published it in the February 2001 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine to help skywatchers evaluate and compare the darkness of night-sky observing sites.

The above Light Pollution Atlas was compiled in 2024. It is obvious that most of the US is dominated by fairly severe light pollution! Only a few areas in the western 1/3 of the country have what can be considered a dark sky. It is a sobering fact that the dark night is a dwindling natural resource.

What is dark? This image courtesy of ESO/P. Horálek, M. Wallner shows the appearance of the Milky Way under the various Bortle sky scale values. The overwhelming majority of the world's population will never see anything darker than around Bortle 7.

This is a color coded Bortle map of the region surrounding my remote observatory in Pie Town, New Mexico. The '+' is the actual location so there we are at Bortle 1-2, pretty dark!

This is a detailed color-coded description of each Bortle scale value courtesy of ClearDarkSky.com, which is a popular resource for astronomers. It provides local Bortle maps for hundreds of observing sites in North America.

So what is the take home message here? The Bortle Sky Classification or Scale is a useful resource to identify the darkest observing sites. ClearDarkSky.com can be used to find many of them, but even a general search using tools such as AI should be able to tell you how dark any campsite is in the world! The dark night sky is a dwindling natural resource and we are not sure how long the remaining areas that are accessible currently will stay dark. My advice is not to wait. Go out there and experience it while you can!

Thanks for reading!

DrDave

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