![]() ![]() Wow!ĭepending on what day in September you are here.sunset is between 7:30 at the first of the month to about 6:45 at the end of it. Its quite impressive actually, and as CasaAzul says.anytime you can see the broad white swath of the Milky Way.you are seeing a ton of stars. ![]() But still, you will see stars way beyond what you will have ever seen at home. And don't expect much if the skies are cloudy. Try to be here when the moon is not full. Main thing is to drive clear of the city lights and out where there is not much tree cover which is actually pretty easy. You can still get that kind of experience on a backpack into the mountains, even if the skies in town aren't what they once were. There was this cloud right overhead for most of the night." A freshly minted Ph.D. ![]() This was the reply: "Well, not as good as I expected. The next morning Bob asked him what he thought of the skies. "Bob," my friend (not his real name), thought he'd show this fellow what our skies are like, and took him backpacking into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe. You might fold in one night of lodging in Los Alamos or White Rock to take advantage of that, not to mention to get closer to Bandelier National Monument, Valles Caldera National Preserve, etc.įunny, and relevant, story from some years back: A climbing friend who worked at the lab was also an astrophysicist, and some years ago he got a post-doc from Johns Hopkins U (in Maryland, one of the top places for recruiting in this discipline) to come out and work for him. A drive up into the Jemez Mountains, west of Los Alamos (you'll drive about 50 miles each way from Santa Fe itself, or 20 if you stay a night in Los Alamos) and beyond the lab, will also provide remarkable skies. The tour mentioned above is well regarded (I have no personal experience with it), and you can dodge most of the urban light-blight by getting to the east side of the mountains. You'll still get skies that are very good by East Coast standards, but they're no longer the stuff of legend. There are a number of reasons for this - urban sprawl (both in Santa Fe and in Albuquerque, which is close enough to affect the skies), the hideous commercial lighting at the noisome casinos on US 84/285 north of town, ridiculously inflated security lighting at Los Alamos National Laboratory across the valley, and so on. Not to rain on your parade, but realistically, the skies here are not as good as thirty years ago or more, when they were indeed spectacular. ![]()
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