BY ISAIAH FRIZZELL
A Sky Worth Fighting For and A Time to Talk On It
What brings you to the Wood River Valley? Sun Valley? Family, work, and recreation are only a few reasons that make Blaine County an exceptional place to live. We roam and rally in the elegance of an open and preserved milieu. Our location is paramount… we live in a Dark Sky Reserve! Take note, however, as this position must be sustained by aware, awake and resilient stewards.
Thus, the Hailey Public Library hosts a NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Sagan Fellow for a talk on “A Revolution in Planet Formation: The ALMA Era and Beyond,” with live telescope viewing plus Q&A. [ALMA is the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in northern Chile. An interferometer, of 66 radio telescopes] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Large_Millimeter_Array)
We Were First!
“The Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, (CIDSR) designated in December 2017, was the first dark sky reserve in the United States, occupying about 1,400 square miles and ranking as the third largest dark sky reserve in the world.” (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/dark-sky-parks-in-the-united-states.html)
“What made the CIDSR possible is that Blaine County communities had already been building the legal infrastructure for decades before a formal International Dark Sky Association (IDA) designation arrived. Ketchum passed one of Idaho’s first dark sky ordinances in 1999. Hailey followed with their dark sky ordinance in 2002, Sun Valley in 2004, and Blaine County adopted a countywide ordinance in 2010.” (https://idahodarksky.org/local-ordinances/)
We have, broadly, been a Dark Sky Reserve for nearly 26 years.
However, with continuous growth and development pressure, every new project presents a compliance challenge. “The Idaho Dark Sky Alliance has noted that if Blaine County funding is not received for monitoring programs, it becomes significantly more difficult to properly assess threats posed by light pollution and the effectiveness of mitigation efforts.“ (https://www.blainecountyid.gov/DocumentCenter/View/15584/Dark-Sky-Reserve-BCC-2022-funding-request)
RISKY Business & Reasonable Solutions
Galena Summit is essentially the threshold — the pivotal region between the Wood River Valley’s population center and the primary wilderness zones heading north into the Sawtooth Valley. A bellwether location: if skyglow from Hailey and Ketchum reaches Galena, meaningfully? The core is at risk.
Something to consider when building or making additions to city growth, do we want to throw away such a valuable, immaculate designation, for loud growth? Is there another way? Yes.
“Dark sky designation requires continuous, active stewardship rather than a single application achievement, with reserves obligated to submit annual reports proving they meet program standards, sustain outreach partnerships, and are progressing toward 90% lighting compliance.
“The practical work of maintaining that compliance involves retrofitting lights to shielded, downward-directed, warm-spectrum LEDs, enforcing local ordinances in the populated peripheral zones, and conducting regular sky brightness measurements with calibrated meters. What makes the whole system remarkable is that it almost always originates not from government mandate but from a small group of passionate locals who decide their dark sky is worth fighting for — and then build the institutional architecture around that conviction.”
Electrification
Early 20th Century’s sprint toward a proliferation of electricity for lighting, technology, etc., may strike a match in your mind. Wood, coal and gas began swaying that-aways by wind of this revolutionary method of ‘artificial’ light. A new luxury AND a new bill.
However electrically bright might a municipality decide to be? There remain manifest locales that demand respect and protection; hence, we live, gloriously, with a Dark Sky Reserve.
While indigenous cultures — worldwide — navigated, farmed, and built entire cosmologies around unobstructed night skies, the practical degradation of those skies began with widespread electrification.
This is the skein in the weaving of growth and civilization against the inclusion of nature’s splendiferous additions to our human condition. Imagine a night sky devoid of stars, constellations, planets… Now promptly put that thought away as we preserve our skies, avidly.
Moderation in All Things, Including Moderation
International Dark Sky Association (IDA) handles global certification and offers five distinct designations:
Dark Sky Communities: Dark Sky Parks, Dark Sky Reserves, Dark Sky Sanctuaries, Urban Night Sky Places. Their site sheds light, pun intended, on the issues with artificial, or intentional, light: “Light pollution disrupts wildlife, impacts human well-being, wastes money and energy, contributes to climate change, and blocks our view of the universe. (https://darksky.org/)
“An authentic night experience”… At what price? Invaluable. We can obscure the sky, but we cannot change the sky itself (although it can and has been threatened to be blocked out by intentional air pollution or, as we see near large cities, exorbitant light).
We’ve all road-tripped through the country (not a home or person in sight, for days! (drive through Texas, Mexico, Montana and count the miles while driving through uninhabited, blessed land) — and then, in the distance, a glow expands from the clouds under which a city looms. Electric light is at once amazing and annoying, depending on your predilection.
And that’s why many live here. Luckily, the people who value visibility and an open sky have their eyes wide open to see, enjoy and learn about what’s in the sky at every distance.
Hailey Library, Seeing Beyond
Lahela Maxwell and the Hailey Public Library along with the Idaho Dark Skies Alliance, Sawtooth Botanical Garden, and Boise State University have brought in a professional observer, continuing their beloved Astronomy Lecture Series.
Welcome Dr. Charles Law, a NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) Sagan Fellow, visiting Hailey to deliver the goods on planetary formation, embodying in real time exactly why our Dark Sky Reserve status is worth protecting.”
A part of the Virginia Initiative on Cosmic Origins consortium, and a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Education Committee, Law received his doctorate of astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University and the Center for Astrophysics.
Law focuses his work using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes — including the James Webb Space Telescope JWST. He studies the chemistry of how stars and planets are born, examining the conditions in which young planets take shape.” (https://claw-astro.github.io/)
Exo-Planets and the Formation of Life
Those are big names and this is a huge concept. Law, a humorous and approachable professor is here to speak on and reveal what he’s seen and what they’re attempting to categorize.
“I’ll be talking about how planets form, so the idea is, we’re actually able now, with modern telescopes, to be able to understand how our own solar system formed and how all of these other worlds that we are finding around other Suns out there actually formed. We can do this with really beautiful images from our telescopes and we can actually look at that process happening in detail.” Law is, real-time, viewing the formation of life as we know it. The bedrock we or ‘others’ grow on, or you know, planets.
“I really think it touches on this question of origins, right? Sort of how we came to be, how life came to be, how our planet came to be and that’s something that we can now directly address with astronomical observations.” Law will lay it down alongside actual optical telescopic viewing.
The fact that we’re a Dark Sky Reserve is rewarding and a bejeweled reminder of our location. But it isn’t free. We must sustain our status at all costs.
Galena is essentially the threshold — the transition point between the Wood River Valley’s population center and the core wilderness zones heading north into the Sawtooth Valley. It’s a bellwether location: if skyglow from Hailey and Ketchum reaches Galena meaningfully, the core is at risk. Keep this in mind!
Disclosure Ditto
So much has been said in the news, teased for decades and rolled out when a huge distraction is needed. Spielberg has even been carted out, this year, for a new blockbuster about ‘aliens’ called Disclosure Day. Right on time after The Age of Disclosure documentary was released.
Regardless of that discussion, it will be wonderful to hear from and speak with a brilliant professor who works directly with the tools that actually disclose the real workings of the universe.
What a rewarding place, this Valley!
See Dr. Charles Law at the Hailey Pubic Library
https://haileypubliclibrary.org/26-03-07_dark-skies-astro-lecture_law/
Saturday, March 7, at 5:30 p.m.
7 West Croy St.
Hailey, ID 83333
(208) 788-2036
