Mirador Astronomy Village

Photo by John Rummel, Madison WI

Since the beginning of February, I have been able dedicate 10+ hours each week towards creating an astronomy-friendly community called Mirador Astronomy Village. Will you join me in that effort?

Here’s the “placeholder” website:

https://miradorastrovillage.org/

And here are some recent posts I’ve made to Dark-Sky-Communities on groups.io (https://dark-sky-communities.groups.io/g/main) to give you an idea where we’re currently at with this exciting project.

Acquiring Land for Mirador Astronomy Village

The Mirador specifications document located in our Files section and here gives a lot of detail about our vision for an astronomy-friendly residential community and astronomy resort & learning center. But before any of this can be developed, we need to have land.

The next step for Mirador is to create a legal entity that can raise money for a land purchase.

Some challenges we face:

  • Mirador could be located in Arizona, New Mexico, or West Texas. We don’t want to limit our land search to one state, but incorporating in the state where land will be purchased is less complicated.
  • We need an attorney who is familiar with Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas law, but especially with real estate law and corporate law.
  • Does anyone know an attorney who is interested in astronomy, might want to become involved with this project, and might be willing to do some pro bono work?
  • Does anyone know a fundraising professional who is interested in astronomy and might want to become involved with this project?

Our most immediate need is to find an attorney to help us create the legal entity that will be necessary to raise money for a land purchase. This legal entity will exist for one and only one purpose: to purchase land for Mirador Astronomy Village.

Here is what we currently envision for the land-purchase legal entity. Would appreciate your thoughts before we submit this to a prospective attorney.


Land Purchase

Issuance of Shares

  • 1 share = $1000
  • No limit on the number of shares that can be purchased
  • Initial shares and additional shares can be purchased at any time
  • Hold the money in an FDIC-insured interest-bearing account
  • Value of shares remains unchanged except for interest accrued
  • Shareholders can return shares and remove their investment (plus interest) at any time up through the point of the shareholders voting in favor of making an offer on a property but before an offer is actually made
  • 1 share = 1 vote
  • Funds can only be used to purchase a property for Mirador Astronomy Village; any leftover funds will be returned to the shareholders proportional to the number of shares they own.
  • If there are insufficient funds to purchase the property without financing, the shareholders will not be a party to that financing arrangement.
  • It is possible we may acquire land that is “partially donated”, that is the land owner may agree to sell us the land for the amount of funds we have raised to date.
  • Shareholders will be known as Community Founders.
  • After the property is purchased, the monetary value of the shares goes to $0.
  • Benefits for shareholders after the property is purchased will include free RV, camping, and astronomy access to the property as soon as it is acquired; after development, no-additional-cost benefits such as free access to astronomy programs will be offered.
  • Benefits will be proportional to the number of shares owned.
  • If Mirador Astronomy Village isn’t established on the property within five years, the property will be sold and the proceeds returned to the shareholders in proportion to the number of shares they own.

Some Reasons Why I Want to Live in a Dark-Sky Community

Posted 13 July 2020

I drove 20 miles round-trip early Saturday morning to view Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) for the first time. It is beautiful! Easily visible to the unaided eye and spectacular in binoculars. And now, in the more convenient evening sky!

I had to trespass onto private land (as I often do) because we are not allowed to be in any of our state parks here in Wisconsin during the hours of 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. (unless you are a paid camper at a campsite).

One of my motivations for living in a dark-sky community is having a great view of a comet like C/2020 F3 literally right outside my door night after night. The same goes for watching meteors. The visibility of comets and meteors are severely impacted by light pollution—both the general urban skyglow but also nearby lights. Along with just about every other aspect of observational astronomy.

All my adult life I have spent significant time and energy educating (and becoming educated myself) about light pollution, environmentally-friendly lighting, and, of course, astronomy. There have been small victories, yes, but overall I feel my contributions have been a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Living in a “regular community” (as I have all my life), there is always the trepidation with every new neighbor or lighting technology change that your view of the night sky will be degraded even further than it already has, and there is not a darned thing you can do about it if the perpetrator (be it a neighbor or the city) chooses to marginalize you and your kindly-presented concerns. Heck, this can even be a problem living in a rural area. When I had my Outdoor Lighting Associates, Inc. business in Iowa from 1994-2005, I can’t count the many times I got a call from a distressed rural resident that had a new neighbor who decided to light up their place like Las Vegas.

Sure, a lighting ordinance would help a lot, but in most cities and towns these days they’ll look at you like you’re from Mars if you try to make enacting one a priority.

There are many advantages to living in a small community, but where I live now (population 4,700) there is no community will nor interest in reigning in bad lighting or in protecting the night sky. However, in 1999 I was deeply involved with writing a lighting ordinance and getting it approved in Ames, Iowa, a university town of 50,000 (at the time). Being a well-educated university town had a lot to do with our success there. Those were kinder, gentler times then, too.


Lighting at Mirador

I’d like to take this opportunity to explain more about the outdoor lighting aspects of an “astronomy-friendly” community. Indoor lighting would have no restrictions except the amount of light shining outdoors at night would need to be controlled with some sort of window covering.

Ideally, an astronomy-friendly community would not allow any dusk-to-dawn lighting. Why have a light shining all night long when most of the night no one will be making use of its illumination? Modern light sources such as LEDs, occupancy sensors, and control electronics have advanced to the point (both in terms of technology and affordability) that dusk-to-dawn lighting is no longer needed, at least not in the kind of small community we are talking about here. I would like Mirador Astronomy Village to be an ongoing demonstration project for the wider world showing a better way to do outdoor lighting. By “better” I mean lighting that provides needed illumination where and when it is needed without adversely affecting the nighttime environment, including our view of the night sky. By “better” I also mean using passive reflective or light-colored materials where possible to reduce the need for—or brightness of—outdoor lighting.

There’s a lot to be said in favor of using “personal lighting devices”, also known as flashlights, when walking about at night.

The permanent outdoor lighting that is installed should be properly shielded and directed so that only what needs to be illuminated is illuminated, thus eliminating glare, light trespass, and direct uplight. The right amount of light for the intended task should be used, never more than is needed.

We certainly will need to be mindful of anyone visiting or living in our community with vision limitations. This is most likely going to be an issue in the areas open to the public at night. Observational astronomers, as a general rule, have learned to see better at low illumination levels through familiarity and experience, but the same is not true for the general public. Accommodations will need to be made with this in mind, and I would expect the public areas to have more illumination.


Getting this project off the ground has been challenging in the midst of a pandemic. There is at least one of several things you can do right now to help this project along.

  1. Post a comment here!
  2. Join the Dark-Sky-Communities discussion group at https://dark-sky-communities.groups.io/g/main. There are several subscription options for your convenience, and even if you subscribe to receive individual emails, the traffic on this moderated group is light and focused specifically on astronomy-friendly residential communities.
  3. Visit the Mirador Astronomy Village website.
  4. Take the time to read through the detailed Mirador Astronomy Village specifications document.
  5. Send me an email at DaveDarkSky@mac.com or call me at 608-930-2120 to discuss.
  6. Spread the word! There may be only a half a dozen people in the United States who can help me to make Mirador Astronomy Village a reality. How do I reach them?

Thank you!

Photo by John Rummel, Madison WI

Apollo 11

On Sunday, July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, on the surface of the Moon at 3:17 p.m. CDT. Later that day, Armstrong, age 38, and Aldrin, age 39, became the first human beings to walk on another world, 51 years ago this day. Fifty-one years before that, World War I was nearing its end while the 1918 flu pandemic was ramping up in its fifth month of a twenty-six month ordeal.

Armstrong and Aldrin landed at lunar latitude 0.7° N and longitude 23.5° E, in Mare Tranquillitatis (The Sea of Tranquillity). Back here on Earth, the lunar phase was waxing crescent (35% illuminated), and the Moon set that night in Dodgeville at 11:23 p.m.—just a few minutes before Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the lunar module after spending over two hours on the surface of the Moon.

Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the lunar surface at 9:56 p.m. CDT, followed by Buzz Aldrin at 10:15 p.m. After exploring the lunar surface and setting up several scientific instruments, Buzz Aldrin returned to the lunar module at 12:01 a.m., followed by Neil Armstrong at 12:09 a.m. Monday morning.

After five hours of work stowing samples and other housekeeping tasks, Armstrong and Aldrin tried to get some sleep during a scheduled seven hour rest period. However, there were no beds in the lunar module—not even any chairs! Armstrong tried to sleep on the ascent engine cover in the rear of the cabin and Aldrin tried to sleep curled up on the floor. Adding to their discomfort, both astronauts had to keep their spacesuits on. And the lunar module was noisy, bright light leaked into the cabin, and they were too excited to sleep. Aldrin got about two hours of restless sleep. Armstrong got none.

The lunar module took off at 12:54 p.m. Monday afternoon, docked with the command module piloted by Michael Collins at 4:35 p.m., and then the astronauts began their journey home.

One of the little known facts of the Apollo missions is all the high-tech “garbage” that was left behind on the lunar surface to allow the astronauts to bring back more moon rocks. All in all, over 800 lbs. of moon rocks and lunar soil were brought back to Earth during the six lunar landing missions, the last of which returned to Earth on December 19, 1972.

Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3)

Finally, a bright comet! Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE was discovered on March 27, 2020 by the NEOWISE space telescope. NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) is the current extended “warm” mission of WISE after its hydrogen coolant became depleted.

Currently visible in the morning twilight sky, Comet NEOWISE is already a naked-eye object and is spectacular in binoculars, low in the NE, below and a little to the left of the bright star Capella. Soon it will be moving into the evening sky, though it is expected to diminish in brightness somewhat as it gets further from the Sun. Here’s an ephemeris for Comet NEOWISE for July and August showing when it will be at least 10˚ above the horizon in a sky that is not brightened by either twilight or moonlight. Avoiding light pollution, however, is up to you. Enjoy!

Comet naming these days is a mess! For one, some of the acronyms used for the automated surveys that discover them are unattractive. Thank heavens neither of the two comets named ASASSN (C/2017 O1 and C/2018 N2) ever became as bright as our current comet!

There were three comets NEOWISE in 2014, three in 2015, three in 2016, one in 2017, two in 2018, two in 2019, and one (so far) in 2020.

Comet NEOWISE

C/2014 C3
P/2014 L2
C/2014 N3
P/2015 J3
C/2015 X8
C/2015 YG1
C/2016 B1
C/2016 C2
C/2016 U1
C/2017 C1
C/2018 EN4
C/2018 N1
C/2019 H1
C/2019 L2
C/2020 F3

Might I suggest that we give this year’s first NEOWISE comet the following name?

Comet NEOWISE 15 (C/2020 F3)

Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) 19 July 2020 3:21:59 UT 30s 55 mm f/4 ISO 1600 Canon EOS 100D
Photo by David Oesper
Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) 20 July 2020 3:38:57 UT 3m 55 mm f/4.5 ISO 1600 Canon EOS 100D
Photo by David Oesper
Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) 23 July 2020 3:22:17 UT 2m 55 mm f/4 ISO 1600 Canon EOS 100D
Photo by David Oesper