Thursday, January 24, 2008

Mars On Ice


This is my official no. 2 post. Hopefully it lives up to its name.
It was an absolutely clear sky tonight, again. It's been this way all week. I missed out on a full moon snowshoe hike up at Mt. Baker on Tuesday night. I made up for it a bit tonight, by going out for an hour and a half up the hill above Arroyo, towards Lost Lake. Headlamp required. It was more like hiking on the uphill, and jogging all around, because the mud was icey, and it would've been easy to lose an ankle on a mud rut.
The cool sighting of the night was....The Planet Mars! I think. It was a red star in the southeastern sky. If it wasn't Mars, it was still red, and it was still cold out.
I heard about a non-profit that sounded kind of cool--the International Dark Sky Association. Their mission is to protect the nighttime skies from light pollution. It's tough to find anyplace anymore with a truly dark sky, and folks a 100 years ago could see a whole lot more stars than we can today. Dark night skies with stars are cool.

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