It's tough seeing through a Bakerspatch sky even with a dark night.

But it certainly would help the amateur astronomer.

Where did you hear about Kern County considering this Mark?

My brother use to go to Palomar Mountain and look through their telescope when our family lived in San Diego (he has a master's in astromomy, but now works in the computer industry). He was part of a group that got that area to use lower wattage lights. In some areas, the powers that be actually listen to their residents and take the appropriate action.

I'll bet your brother knows my eccentric friend Bob Austin, John.

http://www.bakersfield.com/... I am so excited~ we really need to help get this passed. It is mostly to help the outlying places preserve "dark skies" to keep sky tourism~ but it can only help us in the city!

I think this is a great idea. I ran across this story last night while reading through the blogs and seeing the "Our readers recommend" list below this box. After reading the story I actually considered writing a blog about this myself, but I figured someone else would write about it, so I let you have it. Great blog, Mark.

I'd love to get rid of some of the light pollution. I don't live in the city, of course, but I enjoy staring out at the sky during the night. I don't know anything about astronomy.

The neighborhood Mark took his scope to has a hooded street light policy to help cut down on the "city lights."  Hopefully more than just KRV will benefit from the "Dark Sky" policy.

Here is an excellent resource:  http://www.darksky.org/mc/p...

For those of us who know there is a milky way "up there somewhere",and want to share the wonder of the night~ this will really help.

Sorry for the delays..My home puter has crashed and I have to rely on my work puter to do anything for the time being and it's hard to find time to sneak in personal time on this thing at work..I am supposed to be working NOW!..

Anti..There was an article in Sunday's paper about it...

I got into actually checking stars out when I was living in Tulare in the early 80s with binoculars. When I moved back to Tehachapi, my girlfriend at the time, bought me a 2.75" refractor(like the little ones you can get just about anywhere)at a yard sale. I had no idea what or where anything other than the moon was. Then I pointed it at a really bright star. Even through such a small scope, the bands of Jupiter were evident! I just started pointing it around and found binary stars and a cluster, but when I stumbled across the Andromeda Galaxy, I was hooked. I begans buying start charts and books on anstronomy and got a subscription to Astronomy Magazine(which I still have). I bought my 8" about a month later. It really is too bad that so many parents can't even take their kids outside and show them the Milky Way. Maybe, with the energy crunch, that will, once again, become possible. 

Mark

I would love a dark skies policy.  We lived in Strathmore during the early 1980's.  Every evening we sat on the deck and looked at the stars.  The night sky was black with millions of stars and planets.  We could even see the milky way.

Now we can't see anything.   I have neighbors across the street who have very bright lights on either side of their garage door.  They also have a series of 12 solar lights in the flowerbeds.  It looks like a airport runway over there.

Let's enact a dark skies policy and then a noise policy.  Maybe peace will come back into our lives.

Living here in the valley, you kinda forget about the stars because you never see them.  When we went camping in the mountains a while back I was shocked to see such a brilliant light display up in the sky.  It made me sad that the sight of stars was surprising to me.

Be glad you don't live in NY city.  Some of the kids there have probably never seen a star.

Check out the COMMUNITY VOICES piece that appeared on this issue:

http://www.bakersfield.com/...

I didn't write that weird title (but I did write the rest).

Go to www.KRVR.org, click on the DARK SKY tab for a whole lot more info on this.

krvr.org/index.php or http://krvr.org/index.php?o...

If you want to be on a big e-mail list for the Kern County Outdoor Lighting Ordinance (aka Dark Sky Ordinace), e-mail me @ eworinkrv@mchsi.com