SEATTLE — Looking to embrace your inner Stephen Hawking? For all you aspiring stargazers, you’re in luck. Summer offers the region’s clearest night skies, making it the best season to explore the opportunities our local astronomy scene has to offer. Washington is blessed with three assets on that front: exceptional public access to telescopes, enthusiastic amateur astronomers eager to share their hobby and an abundance of nearby dark skies despite being home to a large metropolitan area.
The latter is arguably the most key ingredient. “Everything east of the Mississippi is so light polluted, good luck finding dark skies anywhere,” says David Ingram, vice president of education at the Seattle Astronomical Society. Ideal viewing conditions occur between the third quarter and first quarter moon, with the darkest skies around the new moon. Be warned: Last-minute clouds and rain can ruin the party.
Come prepared for a late night. The sky doesn’t truly get dark until after 10 p.m., which can make this otherwise family-friendly activity conflict with children’s bedtimes. To avoid any luminous faux pas, park facing away from the stargazing site, turn your phone to its lowest brightness setting and use the red light setting on your headlamp or flashlight. If possible, arrive before dark to get oriented at the site. After about 20 minutes in the dark, however, your eyes will adapt.
Summertime at this latitude brings out a celestial cornucopia. Gazing out at Sagittarius, the bigger Lagoon and smaller Trifid nebulae are both visible to the naked eye, but come to life through a telescope lens where you can see a star with 20 times the mass of our sun. The Scutum Constellation guards the Wild Duck Cluster, a collection of stars that resembles a flock of ducks. In the Hercules Constellation, look for the Great Globular Cluster. Comprising several hundred thousand stars, this night sky wonder is still revealing its secretsone of its stars was discovered just last year. A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy neighbors us over here in the Milky Way. As for planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all come out to play.