Chile’s Dark Skies and the Scale of Light Pollution

For most of us, to see a truly starry night isn’t easy. I have been writing about dark skies and light pollution for almost 20 years. And I have seen some breathtaking skies—southern Morocco at the edge of the desert so plush with stars it still seems like a dream, the Racetrack in Death Valley with stars rising in the east and dropping off the edge of the world in the west. At other times when I’ve gone to see the sky, I found too much humidity in the air, or too many clouds, or the obscuring…