Lately, I have be conversing with my 8 year old regarding the stars…he wonders…where they have gone?  As a boy I used to lay on my back in the mountains for North Carolina and gaze for hours on end gazing at the band of the Milky Way, tracking a shiny object as it traversed the sky (had to of been a satellite…).   As I have grown older, I have stopped gazing with wonder at the heavens…until recently.  Where did the wonder go?  Am I to busy to crane my neck to peer at the sky while I take the trash out?  No I still do that.  But it is but a glancing look in homage to the hunger that sleeps below.  I have become ensnarled in a whirlpool of business and congestion such that the cities that I dwell and visit keep my thirst at bay.

Only by the prodding of a child have I become awakened of my first true passion, the stars! 

As I take my 7 week old puppy out to relieve herself…I set out to count the visible stars in my field of view.  I counted 21, how sad.  For, I know that there are countless stars above, yet I am robbed of them due to the light emitted around me.  Will my son ever see the band of the Milky Way?  Will he gaze through a telescope in wonder at the rings for Saturn?  Will he watch the steady progression of man’s orbiting tecknology across the sky? 

Yes!  He must…

So what am I to do?  I can’t vary well shoot out all the lights around me that block our view, I must go away from that light.  I need to reach out and howl at the moon.  (Ok, maybe not that far…)

So what have I done so far?

I put my money and efforts where my mind is…

I have reached out to Dr. Dan Canton, Professor of Physics and Astronomy @ Appalachian State University (ASU) (www.DanCaton.physics.appstate.edu) and have begun supporting the efforts of not only to enable my son to gaze wonderingly at the stars, but the general public as well.  ASU is the home of the Dark Sky Observatory (http://www.dancaton.physics.appstate.edu/Observatories/DSO/index.htm) which is currently working towards a public access area to make the heavens open to all.  I have begun supporting this effort and rekindled my passion for the skies.  Look for more here regarding our efforts.

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