Usually, being top-ranked is something to celebrate, especially when it’s related to tourism. But a new report saying that California is the best state in the nation for stargazing has even some Californians looking askance.
The Los Angeles Times put the story on its front page Wednesday: “Your best bet for stargazing? California, oddsmakers declare.”
It wasn’t just a play on words.
Curiously, the poll had been conducted by a sports betting website that, in a master class in mission creep, said it had analyzed “sky visibility, elevation, historical meteor activity, and astronomical infrastructure to compile a ranked list of the best states for witnessing celestial events.”
In this list, California came out on top, followed by Colorado, Oregon, Utah and New Mexico.
Even California stargazers aren’t buying this.
“The ranking of those places doesn’t necessarily make any sense at all and is probably based on a variety of assumptions, maybe some judgment involved about which of those states have more dark sky territory and accessibility,” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, told Karen Garcia of the Los Angeles Times.
Krupp also pointed out that the report had focused on where the best places are to see an asteroid — even though usually you can’t see an asteroid without a telescope. (Possibly they meant meteors, which are visible to the naked eye.)
Nonetheless, California was cited for its “outstanding combination of dark skies and infrastructure” while Utah came in fourth place because its “national parks and remote deserts deliver exceptional night-sky clarity.”
With the skies increasingly dimmed by light pollution, dark-sky tourism, also called astrotourism, is booming, and companies completely unrelated to astronomy are trying to cash in on Americans’ interest in celestial grandeur.
In another poll of dubious origins released to the media this month, a website promoting tarot cards said its survey of 3,000 “campers and skywatchers” found that three of the best stargazing sites are in Utah: Natural Bridges National Monument, Dead Horse Point State Park and Capitol Reef National Park.
There’s an easier way to find this out: the Dark Sky International website, where you can search for the best stargazing sites near you — something that people are especially interested in right now, with the Perseid meteor shower continuing through the end of the month.
And as Dennis Romboy reported earlier this year, “Utah has some of the darkest skies on Earth and the highest concentration of certified International Dark Sky parks and communities in the world.”
They include five national parks (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion), 10 state parks and three communities that have been certified International Dark Sky places.
Moreover, U.S. News & World Report last year called Utah “the predominant state for dark skies.”
“The city of Moab is an International Dark Sky Community that draws visitors as a haven for outdoor recreation. The area encompasses the Arches and Canyonlands national parks, as well as the Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments. The lighting ordinances encourage practices that minimize light pollution, a big priority for Dark Sky Places; the Moab area even offers residents financial assistance to retrofit their lighting fixtures,” U.S. News & World Report said.
Not to throw any shade on California, which remains golden despite its quirks, but Utah has equal claim to the best stargazing sites in the country, and Americans didn’t need a sports betting company to tell them that.
