If we are thinking about this could we consider a higher elevation like
Payson as well. There are a lot of great summertime objects we just don't
view due to the heat.
Ken C
On Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 18:09 Robert Ayers <astroayers@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
â
While I bounce around the edges of the valley when I observe, I've wondered
why all the local phx clubs haven't pooled some resources and build
something like the Tucson club did in southeast AZ.
I'm emailing from over here in San Jose California. (I own a dark-sky
site in boonies northern Arizona, which is why I joined az-observing.)
The San Jose metro area has two million people. (A lot more if you include
SF Oakland etc) And several astronomy clubs. And we do not have a owned
site either. (I know of one very small club-owned site in the bay area: in
Livermore.) We use several county-park and "open space" sites for monthly
club night-sky get-togethers. I have wondered about this and tried to talk
it up. "Tucson has a new site. Orange County has had a site for decades.
Why not us?"
Closest I have come to an answer is "You need a sparkplug to make it
happen. One or a couple of people who are really committed." You can
learn more by talking to those successful clubs. I have email-talked to
Tucson people and found them friendly and helpful.
Looking at Phoenix at "ClearDarkSkies", you can get from city-center to
"blue" in the light-pollution maps in fifty miles in several directions, to
"dark grey" in eighty miles in several directions. That's better than in
Silicon Valley, where "blue" more like 80 miles in precisely one direction,
and private land there is hard to come by. (The CAC is eighty miles from
center-city Tucson and in the dark grey.)
So my guess is the reason that Phoenix doesn't have a site like the CAC
site is because no small group has said "Damn, we are really gonna make
this happen!"
Bob Ayers
www.RobertMartinAyers.org
--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please
send personal replies to the author, not the list.
