USATODAY.com – Nights with a heavenly view By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
Particularly here in the Land of Enchantment. Home to some of the country’s darkest and clearest skies, New Mexico has long been a magnet for star buffs. …
One of the best-known portals to New Mexico’s nighttime marvels is Chaco Canyon, eerie, windswept desert ruins about midway between Grants and Farmington (or the proverbial Middle of Nowhere).
Chaco began offering astronomy programs in 1991 and opened its own observatory — the only one in a national park — seven years later. Park managers have designated Chaco’s night sky a critical resource in need of protection, and they have retrofitted all park lighting to enhance after-dark viewing and reduce light pollution from cities as far afield as Albuquerque, about 150 miles to the southeast.
Today, about 14,000 self-sufficient visitors a year come to gaze and graze on ancient tales. (Aside from the park’s 49-space campground and a bare-bones inn in Nageezi, the closest food and lodging is an hour and a half’s drive away.)
Given New Mexico’s average of more than 300 sunny days a year, chances of scoring a cloudless night in Chaco are high. But even on a Saturday evening when the Anasazi’s beloved Father Sky is cloaked by thunderheads, magic is in the air.