Black Butte Ranch values its dark skies

On the evening of Friday, November 9, four high school students of the Sisters Astronomy Club - Joelle Asson, Amy Hills, Paola Mendoza and Ramsey Schar - and educator Rima Givot ventured into the dark of night to measure, well... the dark of night.

Their work was requested by Jay Head and Joe McDermott, residents of Black Butte Ranch, as part of an effort by the community to gain certification from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA).

Head and McDermott escorted the group to five locations throughout the Ranch in an effort to ascertain the degree of "darkness" of the sky at each site. Using a set of star charts showing varying numbers of stars for a particular area of the sky, the students were to choose the chart that most accurately matched what they saw in the sky. Oliver McDermott, Joe's son, operated a device called a Sky Quality Meter that measures darkness directly. It was used for purposes of comparison.

Head and McDermott are passionate about wanting to preserve dark skies here in Central Oregon and are reaching out to IDA for help. IDA's mission is to "preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting."

Specifically, Black Butte Ranch is seeking certification from IDA as an International Dark Sky Community. To qualify, a town, city, municipality or other legally organized community must show exceptional dedication to the preservation of the night sky through the implementation and enforcement of a quality outdoor lighting ordinance, dark sky education and citizen support of dark skies.

The dark sky survey is only one of a number of prerequisites necessary to earn IDA recognition. According to McDermott, the resort is working on developing guidelines that would require fully shielded outdoor lights that produce warmer amber light instead of the greater glare emitted by white and blue light. Black Butte Ranch is also asking for letters of support from other Central Oregon communities, such as Bend, La Pine, Redmond, Sisters and Sunriver.

Community outreach has already been offered by the Sisters Astronomy Club, to help conduct on-site star parties and impart knowledge about other aspects of astronomy, emphasizing the importance of maintaining dark skies. Such support will likely come from the Pine Mountain Observatory and the Oregon Observatory at Sunriver as well.

"We believe IDA's certification will attract conservation-minded vacationers to Black Butte who will tend to appreciate our dark skies," said McDermott. To further entice such visitors, Head and McDermott are considering pouring concrete pads at several locations throughout the resort from which to view the sky with telescopes or conduct astrophotography.

McDermott hopes the resort can earn its certification sometime during the summer of 2019. If Black Butte Ranch is successful in securing IDA's endorsement, it will become the first community to do so anywhere in Oregon or Washington.

Several other Central Oregon communities would do well to follow Black Butte's lead by establishing more stringent lighting guidelines of their own that require outdoor lamps to be fully shielded behind opaque coverings. If this issue isn't aggressively addressed soon, growing light pollution will cause our precious dark skies to vanish.