[music]
- WOMAN: There's something magical about this place.
It's like nothing else.
- MAN 1: We're trying really hard to protect the skies -
keep the skies dark.
- MAN 2: Without the dark skies here, we- we'd be in a
world of hurt.
It's beginning to encroach on us.
[soft wind blows, music]
- MAN 1: The dark skies, the remote locations,
the high elevation, the dry climate, and the southerly
location all combine to make this an ideal spot
for an observatory.
McDonald historically and certainly ongoing today
has had a very active public outreach/education program.
Astronomy is an excellent vehicle for science education
in the country.
I don't have the technical inclination to be an
astrophysicist, the math and the physics stuff escapes me.
The biggest part of my job responsibilities are maintaining
the dark skies, keeping the skies dark for the observatory.
[cars passing]
"Dark sky" just means the lack of any artificial light sources,
anthropogenic light, man-made, human-origin light sources.
It's a relatively recent phenomenon,
I mean "light pollution" wasn't a term anybody would have
understood a hundred years ago.
And astronomers are kind of like the canaries in the coal mine,
we're the first ones to say, "Hey, wait a second.
The skies aren't as dark here as they used to be."
Tens of billions of dollars a year worldwide is just wasted
up into the night sky, light that's doing nobody
any good whatsoever and is blocking our view of the stars.
♪ ♪
One of my earliest memories is watching the moon rise
through a pair of binoculars leaned up against a window.
Ever since then I've been fascinated by the night sky
and looking through telescopes.
It's going to look like a garage sale in here.
The new upgraded parts are still being attached to the telescope.
There we go.
Yeah, I mean it doesn't even look like a, I mean,
I've had people come in here and say, "So where's the telescope?"
You know?
The amount of data collected by the telescope is about to
dramatically increase, gathering light from galaxies that are
10, 12 billion light years distant, very faint objects.
We're talking about maybe a dozen or so photons per hour
will be collected by the telescope, so if the background
sky gets brighter than the faint objects that
we're trying to observe, then we lose them,
they're lost for observation.
So it's critical that we maintain the dark skies
here at McDonald Observatory and West Texas.
It's an amazing project.
It's really remarkable.
Can't wait to get on a star.
- When you say pollution, you don't think of light
as being in that category of pollution.
So it's not something you think you're doing wrong.
And when I talk about the dark skies, I try to help
people understand how easy it is to preserve them.
All it is is a choice you make at Home Depot...
to buy the light that points down instead of points up.
♪ ♪
And doing it here, I think, is important because people can see
the dark sky and once people kind of get an idea of what they
could have in their backyard, they're more motivated to go
and make those right decisions.
- You can come into this community at night
and you'll think, "Where'd the power go?"
Because we, as a group, keep our night lights
either directed downward or don't use them.
But it's encroaching from other areas, particularly the
oil patch in the Permian Basin.
The only way to keep McDonald Observatory working
and safe and viable is for dark skies.
- BILL: We've seen the glow along the horizon to our
northeast steadily increase.
We are not against outdoor lighting at night,
this is not an anti-light campaign.
We're trying to promote good lighting.
First off there are ordinances in place-
outdoor lighting ordinances in place in the seven counties
that surround the McDonald Observatory that ask,
basically, that light be kept on the ground and out of the sky.
Within the seven counties the Texas Railroad Commission
has let right at 5,000 permits in five years to drill
for oil and gas, and that's just the drilling,
that doesn't take into account all the facilities that
go along with oil and gas production, so there are
literally thousands of installations within the region
that's protected by law to keep the skies dark.
I don't think a single oil and gas operator even knew that
there was a lighting ordinance in place.
- LARRY: Our ability to enforce a dark skies-type ordinance
thing sort of ends at the county line for us.
There's just so many things we can't do.
We're not talking about enforcement, we're talking
about education.
You can force people to do a lot of things,
but the better thing is to educate people
how important this is.
- I've been to probably a dozen major conventions
over the past year and a half.
- LARRY: Bill's a great guy.
I mean, he can sell this.
And he does sell this.
And he goes around, and that's what we have to do
is to educate.
BILL: It's not a technical problem,
it's an educational problem.
I don't think there's anybody that's insensitive
or doesn't care, it's just not a blip on their radar screen.
A lot of them will say, "Well I've never really thought
about it before," but once they do it's like, "Well sure,
this is a problem that we don't need to have."
If we can just keep the light on their work and out of the sky,
problem solved.
- MAN: Going to a state park in a place away from the city,
it's a really majestic feeling.
We're really using state parks as demonstration sites.
We'll just do a tour of the constellations and people can
learn a little bit, and then we'll start talking to people
about light pollution and how they themselves can help reduce
some of the light pollution, because we you do go
and see the Milky Way, it's a really inspiring sight.
- Today Enchanted Rock joins an elite group of
park preserves and other conservation areas worldwide as
an IDA - International Dark Sky Park.
We look forward to a long and enduring relationship with
Enchanted Rock and Texas Parks and Wildlife that will
help us keep the stars at night truly "big and bright."
Please accept this award with our compliments.
Congratulations Doug.
- DOUG: Thank you!
- Yeah!
You've done so much.
[applause]
Do people living in urban areas notice that they're
missing anything?
Some don't.
But if they've never really seen it, then it's hard to
convey the meaning or the value that it might have.
There's nothing quite light getting out under a starry sky
and actually seeing it for yourself.
♪ ♪