Astronomy Magazine (June 2016)

Protecting America's Last Dark Skies

A smattering of crisp white clouds lingers west of Grand Canyon National Park. ... If you say here on a moonless night like this and counted through dawn, you could tally thousands of stars.

"The place you are in is special -- keep that in your mind -- in contrast to the places that most of live," says International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) astronomer John Barentine, who manages the Dark-Sky Places Program. "Every human being once shared this experience of looking up into the night sky and seeing it filled with stars."

"The human brain saw patterns in those stars. And we translated all of our human hopes and our fears and our dreams and our worries onto those stars," says Barentine. The natural night sky inspires."