Milky Way

The name Milky Way means two things: the star-packed photogenic river of stars across sky for one. It also refers to the hundreds of billions of stars that make up our galaxy. No matter where you look in the Western Slope sky, every star is part of our galaxy.

“We are here.” That is the first thing I tell people at a national park visitor center, as I point to our location on a park map. Even if they didn’t ask,…

You don’t have to travel to a national park to enjoy the night sky, especially here on the Western Slope. Even in the midst of Montrose, we can see a…

If you venture out under clear and dark Western Slope winter skies, you’ll notice a diffuse glow, extending from the northwestern horizon across the…

Globular star clusters form a huge halo around the Milky Way Galaxy. If we resided at the center of our Galaxy, we would see them in every direction.…

Over my ranger career, I’ve been posted at some of the most spectacular locations on the planet. Grand Teton, Zion, Everglades, Wind Cave, and the Black…

Early autumn is Milky Way season. You may have seen its graceful arch creeping higher above the horizon over the past few months. Now, in early September,…

Now is a great time to gaze into our dark skies and to contemplate the Milky Way, our home galaxy. After twilight ends on late September evenings, the…

More than 99 percent of the people living in the U.S. and Europe look up and see light-polluted skies, according to a new atlas of artificial night sky brightness.

The summer night sky elicits an extra sparkle of excitement when we see the silvery, arcing band of the Milky Way, a beautiful cross-cut view of our home…