DARK SKY STATE OF MIND

Utah stands out with protected night skies.

Katy Spratte Joyce

The drive up to the mountaintop yurt is a bumpy one. I rattle back and forth in the 4×4, the dusk breeze soft on the ascent. I'm in Utah's Wasatch Range, on the western edge of the Rockies. Wasatch is a Ute word for “low place in high mountains,” but there's nothing low about the 5,925-foot altitude. Wildflowers are blooming, silvery lupine the showstopper of the bunch. I'm here, at the Lodge at Blue Sky, to watch the Perseids meteor shower with astronaut Terry Virts. The former commander of the International Space Station holds the record for most astrophotographs taken on a single space mission, with more than 319,000 images. (He's written multiple books about his adventures, including A View from Above for National Geographic.) I hear Virts talk about…

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ROVA (Digital) - 1 Issue, Forty-Four: August/September 2024

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