Welcome To The Second Driftless Zone Star Party!.
Well it's time for another Driftless Zone Star Party. The first
one went off with decent, but not great skies, and a major conflict
with timing, (We did it on Astronomy Day!) So many already had
plans for other events. Well we took a couple years off, but it's
time to do another!
We have been doing Star Parties for many many years, Over 30 years now! But our original site sadly has become like a lot of the country, far too light polluted for us to continue holding them at this original location. So the Hunt Was On!
First, we researched in the area between Chicago, and Minneapolis, using all of the various light pollution maps we could find.
We were amazed as to how bad the Light Pollution problem has become! There was only one sole spot between Chicago, and Minneapolis that was still dark. We Overlaid the best image we could obtain onto a standard area road map to actually see where the sole dark zone really is located. This narrowed our search for a suitable site to a single location as seen on our front page.
Before the first DZSP two years ago, finding this spot took us years to make a reality. Now obviously we knew we wanted the Star Party to be in that blue area, The Darkest area between Chicago, and Minneapolis but where? That is the part that took us years to make happen. Any public land was either not in the "Dark Zone", or even if the location was in the "Dark Zone" the location still had too many local lights and the owners of the lights were not willing to have the lights shut off for the event. Or just simply the properties were un-suitable for telescope use, like in the bottom of a huge valley where most of the sky just was not even visible.
Till we found one willing farmer!
Through a local science teacher, who we were planning one of our Near Space Sciences "Edge Of Space" Flights.
He had a brother-in-law with a LARGE farm that just happened to be inside the "Dark Zone" He contacted him and he said sure!
And this site is indeed incredible!
Way up high on a ridge, almost true horizon the full 360 degrees around, and not a single light to be seen!
Below is a scaled down thumbnail of the horizon, Click on it for the full sized version.
Way up high on a ridge, almost true horizon the full 360 degrees around, and not a single light to be seen!
Below is a scaled down thumbnail of the horizon, Click on it for the full sized version.
Why is this called the "Driftless Zone Star Party"?
Click HERE to learn why.