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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

Question: I live in San Francisco and I have recently become pretty obsessed with going to a place like this. I want to go somewhere extremely dark where I can see the sky in a form that's similar to what someone might have seen before the invention of electric lights.

Does anyone know a good place in America like that? Ideally it would have other good natural features to entertain me during the day.

I just can't help but thinking that looking up at the sky a thousand years ago must have been absolutely awe inspiring. A civilization without artificial light would look up and see a dazzling display of starlight. it's no wonder they all believed there was a supreme power above them.

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This map provides a pretty good guide, and I've found it to be fairly accurate as to orders of magnitude even if its data is dated: http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

To get truly dark skies you'll have to drive 5-6+ hours from SF. Much of the Sierras don't cut it anymore, and Mendocino NF gets lots of light pollution from the central valley, or too far north can have too much water vapor in the air.

Places I've been to within a 7-8 hour drive of SF with super-dark skies:

Central Nevada in the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF units (e.g., North Toiyabe Crest or Table Mountain), or pretty much any place in central Nevada. Northern parts of Death Valley. Warner Mountain range in Modoc County, CA.

Further afield:

Great Basin NP in Nevada. Jarbidge Wilderness in Nevada. South-central Utah (e.g., Capitol Reef NP). Gila NF in SW New Mexico.

If you were to pick only one and don't mind a flight and a (super long) drive from Phoenix, Albuquerque or El Paso, Gila NF in New Mexico is the place to go. As I recall, driving along the northern fringe on route 59 I experienced probably the biggest lightless vista view I've seen in the lower 48 states, even compared to many wilderness areas in, say, Kings Canyon NP or elsewhere.

This is on the other side of Gila as well:

https://sites.google.com/site/cosmiccampgroundinformation/

Do you want it to be the same latitude as SF? You could find out where this* was taken.

https://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html#

In addition to the ones in California that others have mentioned, several of our National Parks are very dark, even if not designated as such. Zion National Park in Utah is one. Grand Staircase Monument, also in Utah, as well. Recently went on a photo tour of those 2.

Note that it's getting to the end of the time of year when the Milky Way is at its most brilliant. From ~November through April, it's not as spectacular as ~May though October. And, as others have said, you want to do it when there's no moon (once every 28 days).

Good luck! It's truly beautiful!

This is my favorite dark sky finder site. [0]

The light pollution overlay is the highest resolution I've seen outside more advanced tools, and it has clickable markers for registered dark sky locations, and more locations than any other map I've found as well.

[0] http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/

Good luck! It's definitely worth doing!

Self-plug: I live under Bortle Class 1 sky in New Mexico. It's absolutely amazing! We are in the process of building a small cabin on our land that we plan to rent out starting in 2018 so we can share this experience with others. Keep an eye on http://darkskycabin.com ...

You should do well if you slapped a photo of the night sky on that web page and a form to collect email addresses.

Mono Lake and Bodie in California are really quite good. Plan to go during a new moon. And they're reasonably close to SF.

Which happens to be tomorrow.

Death Valley NP and Joshua Tree NP are both dark-sky parks.

Was going to mention Joshua Tree. Beautiful skies at night and a lot to do during the day.

Still haven't been to Death Valley but...soon.

Canyonlands NP is great. Same with anywhere near Stanley, Idaho.

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