Dark Ranger Telescope Tours

04/08/2024

Our Solar Eclipse Live Stream:

01/16/2024

Happy New Years from Dark Ranger Telescope Tours!

Our New Year's resolution is to start merchandising in 2024. If you like this poster / t-shirt, it will be available starting in February. On the other hand, if you hate it, buy one for all the people you don't like. Either way, I assure you, we won't produce anything worse. :-)

11/26/2023

Can't wait to go?

Mars in 4K - The Ultimate Edition. The best images of Mars in stunning 4k 60fps. ------------------------------------------------------------------------A fe...

11/24/2023

Avoid the hell of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and instead give them the holiday gift of the heavens!

All gift certificates 25% off the regular price!

explains private tours both on-site and off-site

11/18/2023

What'cha you doing tonight?

Did you know tonight is the Leonids meteor shower? If last night is any indication it should be a good one! Because, last night we saw a beautiful meteor that slowly crossed the sky for a full 3 seconds showering golden sparks as it burned up above us.

Better question: What'cha doing at dawn tomorrow morning? After staying up late for the meteor shower?

There's not much that a Dark Ranger will wake up at 6:00am (MST) for, but I will tomorrow! Because if all goes well, tomorrow will be one of those weird days in history that your grand-kids will keep asking you about, and in retrospect you will wonder why it didn't seem important in the moment. Succeed or fail the media will barely cover this milestone for humanity

SpaceX will attempt a sub-orbital, orbit of Earth with the largest and most powerful rocket ever made -- Starship Heavy Booster -- a vehicle with enough "oomph" to not only put a permanent base on the Moon (Step 1), but help humans reach (Step 2) and occupy Mars (Step 3).

Suborbital, orbit means that instead of going up 250 miles (orbital elevation of the International Space Staton and the Chinese Space Station) where gravity, at that altitude, pulls a spaceship effortless around the planet, SpaceX's Starship (without crew) will fly eastward from south Texas, constantly fighting Earth's gravity at a sub-orbital altitude, so that the vehicle's ability to course correct will be taxed to the maximum, until it splashes down NE of Hawaii. What's more, to make it extra difficult, and to maximize safety for such a difficult test, it's path will dodge and weave over the planet's oceans to minimize the amount of time Starship actually travels overland.

As you my recall last year, the first attempt failed well enough that it drew that attention of extra evaluation from both the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife. The amount power the booster produced was underestimated and caused considerable damage to the launch pad, blasting chunks of concrete into evacuated parking lots and home to important wildlife species marshlands. Then the booster failed to separate from the Starship so that Starship's engines couldn't engage and like a big anchor the booster pulled Starship back down topsy-turvy, where both had to be self-destructed high above the launch pad.

If successful tomorrow, SpaceX and this history is only just beginning to make will cause those pesky grand-kids to demand to know what your were doing when this momentous event transpired.

And this Dark Ranger will NOT have to say "Uh.... well, I was sleeping..." Because even staying up late to enjoy a brilliant display from the Leonid Meteor shower will not be a good enough excuse.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-2

09/10/2023

Getting excited about another full stack launch attempt of SpaceX's Starship?

Here's a nice infographic showing and explaining what we can expect:

09/09/2023

There's a lot of talk today (see source examples in comments below) about the high cost of NASA's next generation of Moon Missions. As will come as no surprise to those of who know who we Dark Rangers are, and what we champion, our support for NASA's is unanimous and unwavering.

Since I, the head Dark Ranger, have a day-job (agency identity withheld for government ethics reasons) where I write grants for, help compete, award, and manage a few multi-million-$ federal government contracts myself, I will say that NASA needs to pivot away from "cost-plus" aka blank-check contracts the DOD "enjoys" like they have with Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman and put all those once great, but now struggling, space contractors under the same constraints of "firm-fixed price" contracts like NASA has with the phenomenally cost-effective SpaceX.

Doubtless some benefiting politicians, out of the other side of their election-fast-approaching, "fiscal-responsibility" mouths, are being lobbied to keep NASA's blank checks flowing (despite the rocket-bureaucrat's superior government ethics). Other than that, I can only assume NASA is truly doing the best they can. Space exploration, like everything transformational, IS expensive.

I can assure you, that at least in one way, NASA, saved a HUGE pile of money from an internship with now Dark Ranger, Liam Yanulis, who created most of animations for the Artemis I mission, for FREE!

You might have mistook his work for live video filmed from "chase spacecraft" (which don't yet exist, even for SpaceX) because NASA intern, Liam was (and still is) that good! If you don't remember those ubiquitous animations from the global media surrounding the Artemis I Mission last November, watch his animations again in this rock-video.

The rest of the story:

We, the Dark Ranger's head-hunted Liam from that NASA internship where he is now doing amazing work for us with astrophotography -- real images of amazing astronomical objects from light years away. Indeed, imagery that will be available in our future gift shop for years to come. Imagery we will have to explain, "Uh no... That's not an from James Webb Space Telescope, it was taken right here! We had this guy named Liam..."

And if NASA realizes who they are missing, and they manage to steal Liam back, we hope you, the American tax-payer, won't mind if he pulls down a modest $60K/yr to be one of NASA's paid virtual reality animators.

In the meantime we know we have Liam through October of 2023. So, if you need another reason (besides the Oct. 14 solar eclipse? Yes, we scheduled it for a Saturday to make it easy for you out-of-state stargazers) to stargaze with us this Fall, how about this one?

You could shake the hand of and maybe get autograph from (before or after his brilliant powerpoint show and telescope operation which you will also enjoy), the young man who took all of us Earthlings (who were paying attention then, or now) on a virtual ride to our Moon, with several orbits, and safely back to the Earth.

Perhaps not as prestigious of a celebrity moment as meeting NASA's other highly talented, and dedicated volunteer, Eddie Vedder?

Of course not! And yet... one thing could lead to another. Liam has also distinguished himself as being one of our go-to excavator heavy-equipment operators. 'Cuz you know 300-seat amphitheaters don't build themselves. And, invincible rockers and fellow NASA-ophiles like Eddie, might be an easy way to fill our future amphitheater up.. from time to time?

First thing's first.

Come meet Dark Ranger Liam Yanulis!

Check out Eddie Vedder's "Invincible" video collaboration with NASA for the Artemis I rollout. For more info on the Moon mission: https://www.nasa.gov/artemi...

04/23/2023

Happy Earth Day from Dark Ranger Telescope Tours. By 2028 we will be able to show light pollution on the surface of the one in a thin crescent phase.

Then hopefully we can convince SpaceX that if we want to go Mars to stay we have go to (the smaller looking yellow dot in a gibbous phase). While Elon is great at rocket science he needs to read some thick books about planetology.

Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold O2 molecules and it's too cold. However if we move 99% of Venus's nearly pure CO2 atmosphere to Mars via cash landing 1000s of human-made dry ice comets (thus also warming Mars while cooling Venus), we can add enough mass to the red planet (out of frame even higher up) that in the deepest canyons on Mars we could get that little planet to hold some O2 without if floating off into space. It would only be about the same amount of O2 as we have at 8000m mountain tops on this planet. Then some low elevation Martians would be able to leave their glass dome cities and walk around without helmets for a bit.

The lesson here Earthlings is if you doubt Elon's vision of making humanity multi-planetary, which we definitely do NOT, maybe you should embrace, as a backup plan the wonderful planet we already have.

Redirect your Starbucks money and/or luxury vacations and get your EVs! Get your solar panels. Eat fewer cows stop drinking almond milk.

But if you don't yet love our "Mom" as much as we Dark Rangers do... At least celebrate Earth Day by not mocking those who are going out of their way to do the right things.

If you are doing less...? You are definitely doing less!

01/22/2023

This 24-ton beast is how we can afford to stay "open" in the winter time.

01/22/2023

It kinda of looks like Hoth, but this is actually just the Dark Ranger Observatory finally experiencing what used to be a normal snow year in the high plateaus of Southern Utah.

Winter stargazing with us is too authentic of an astronomy experience for most people, but if you are looking for high-adventure come join us at 7777 ft.

I'm not counting the extra 3-5 ft. of elevation thanks to the snow you see in these pictures. Besides, we will have the telescopes and the access road plowed out soon.

www.darkrangertelescopetours.com/public.html

01/11/2023

Well, if we are ever going to get anywhere in the galaxy, we are going to have to travel inside rocks.

And knowing that, here's a good idea!

Instead of spending decades carving / blasting a habital cavity inside a solid metallic asteroid, how about shape a wire frame to your liking around a gravel pile asteroid, spin it up (thrusters fueled by the minerals and ices of the asteroid itself) to enough rpms and it will shatter into little pieces that re-weld against your frame and you have yourself a nice hollow asteroid with strong enough walls to take some major impacts from other rocks. Home sweet home for a few generations of 1000s of interstellar travellers.

Get a Wonderful Person Tee: https://teespring.com/stores/whatdamathMore cool designs are on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3wDGy2iAlternatively, PayPal donations ca...

12/23/2022

Getting tired of seeing low temperature posts? So are we! So here are the definitive lows.

And by the way, if you think your low temperatures make you tough... why not join us for a Winter Telescope Tour?

It's not just cold. It's the cold that makes winter the most beautiful time of year to stargaze. https://www.darkrangertelescopetours.com/public.html

12/11/2022

Dark Ranger Telescope Tours is now the proud owner of a Stellarvue 180mm F7 refractor limited-edition telescope!

Get yours while supplies last! https://www.stellarvue.com/svx180t/

Or if you want to save some money, just book a telescope tour with us and we will let you look through ours.
www.darkrangertelescopetours.com

12/10/2022

Have a BLAST with this!

It has everything except tsunamis. Which means if you drop your rock in an ocean or lake it won't be accurate, which disappoints me. I wanted to impact one into Crater Lake... Just to confuse future geologists...

And there's nothing about ejected debris heating up entire atmosphere, in addition to causing 1000s of secondary impacts.

But otherwise it is pretty cool.

What would "be the BOMB" is if somebody could use a geology map so that topography AND rock type could be factored in. You'd get entirely different results if you impacted a solid gold asteroid (that is an option in the app already) into a few 100 ft of Tertiary till vs 1.6 billion year old granite of the Blackhills.

Make your own asteroid and launch it at Earth

12/08/2022

Dec. 7th 2022, 8:38pm MST:
Mars emerging from Full Moon Occultation at 10X speed (3.5 minutes reduced to 20 seconds)

Fast moving thick clouds complicated getting images and video of pre-occultation point of contact (70 minutes prior), but the clouds were thin enough when Mars reemerged we were able to get decent views.

We are sorry if you missed, that Special Event Telescope Tour especially because this exact combination of events (when Mars is only ~200 times farther away from Earth than our full Moon) wont occur again over the Desert Southwest until Feb. 27, 2059.

HOWEVER an even more visually interesting "Glazing Occultation" will occur on January 30, 2023. For a full 60 minutes, Mars will appear to be skimming just above the surface of our 75% full Moon (even though Mars will actually be ~332 times farther away than our Moon) -- definitely something to see!

Get your Special Event Telescope Tours tickets for that night here:
www.darkrangertelescopetours.com

11/25/2022

For our Black Friday spending spree we bought another Meade RCX-400 14" telescope - one of the best telescopes Meade ever made.

And this one is extra special! How far would you drive to have one that is de-forked with Uncle Charlie's Trump's motor upgrade kit?

We drove 1500 miles to Chicago and it was totally worth it!

10/21/2022

Remember when 5.25" floppy disks were so expensive you'd delete stuff you'd later wish you hadn't, just so you could reuse the media? Turns out it might still be there... fragmented, but not gone.

In the meantime, consider that's kind of how it was recently learned that history didn't entirely lose Hipparchus Star Catalogue. Fortunately the Christian scribe who reused these sheets of parchment ~1000 years after Hipparchus's death, didn't do a very thorough job of erasing the old ink before putting down new ink.

And modern palimpsest (yep, it was such a common practice there's a name for scraped and reused parchment) experts were able to read BEHIND the lines to confirm, in Greek writing, the description of 3 of Hipparchus's constellations. These include Ursa Major & Ursa Minor (aka the Big and Little Dipper asterisms) and The Northern Crown.

Sadly, Hipparchus, the Greek, didn't recognized that the Northern Crown is merely part of the skinned hide from the Nemean Lion, being held aloft by Hercules. If only he had a Dark Ranger teach him his Greek constellations, right?

What's more, the remnant writing is not just about the constellations but nearly exact stellar coordinates that are more precise than later charts by Ptolemy in the better preserved widely reproduced Almagest which many heretofore assumed was plagiarized from Hipparchus. If old Ptolemy was a plagiarist, he was smart one who intentionally got his angles less correct.

Apparently it is still unknown if the original parchment faintly showing Hipparchus better science was really from 130ish BCE and therefor a 1000 year example of paper reuse, or if it was a merely reproduction from the same era as the unknown Christian scribe(s).

I can imagine a dialogue between a couple of Monks (names change to protect the not proven guilty):

"Hey Steve! I'm about out of fresh parchment and I need to finish copying one of St. John Climacus manuscripts."
"Write smaller you idiot! This stuff is expensive!"
"I'm writing as small as I can, Steve! Smaller than most people can read!"
"Well Bob... is it a copy of St. John's "Ladder of Divine Ascent?"
"Nah... it's some of his other unpopular stuff."
"Okay, Bob. Well, we better not waste any new parchment if it's not his Ladder of Divine Ascent. Why don't you take these 1000-year-old parchments over there and scrape-off all that Greek crap. It's just a bunch of science and math about stars and angles that nobody will ever miss. Reuse that instead."
"Thanks Steve!" says Bob.

And history almost died.

Technology may have revealed a piece of the long-lost works of Greek astronomer Hipparchus, one of the greatest astronomers of antiquity.

07/01/2022

Dark Ranger Wasatch (Our Northern Utah franchise) has just booked its very first telescope tour!

We are honored to have obtained a special use permit from the Utah Division Natural Resources, with East Canyon State Parks as our first franchise location. Here we will conduct our famous public telescope tours (Friday and Saturday nights) with Private Tour booking options any night of the week.

Scroll to the bottom of our home page for more details and book a Telescope Tour at our new location, one the darkest places in Northern Utah that is also accessible by a paved road.

www.darkrangertelescopetours.com

04/04/2022

German astronomer captures amazing images of the International Space Station from his backward using sophisticated camera system attached to a Celestron 11" telescope:
https://petapixel.com/2022/03/31/photographer-spots-astronauts-on-spacewalk-outside-iss-from-earth/

Incredible detail shot from his backyard.

03/06/2022

Lots of tickets still available for tonight's (Sunday, March 3) public telescope tour! Early March is our favorite season because Orion and its spectacular star-birth nebula are prominent in the sky as is our favorite star cluster known as "The Owl Cluster."
Showtime is 8:00pm. Book your winter telescope tour tickets here: https://www.darkrangertelescopetours.com/public.html

01/25/2022

Looking for another reason to come to Southern Utah this May?

The Dark Rangers are excited to announce that our next Special Event Telescope Tour will be Sunday, May 15, 2022 so that we can share with you a conveniently timed and long-duration lunar eclipse! See a big, beautiful, bright, full Moon fade to dim red and then return while ALSO marveling at our super-dark sky (4000 stars visible to the naked eye) for the hour our Moon remains inside Earth's shadow.

The show starts at 9pm and as always, goes until you are cold, tired or bored. Dress warmly!

Book your tickets now! (special link at bottom right-hand side of our home page): www.darkrangertelescopetours.com

01/25/2022

Hmmm.... So I guess we will be getting the newer square version. Are we to call it a Dishy McSquareFace?

Might not be as comfortable for cats to sleep in as the round ones, but it's still going to be an awesome game changer for employees of Dark Ranger Telescope Tours.

12/09/2021

The Dark Ranger Observatory, still has no bookings yet for Dec. 13, the night (though best after Moon set at 3am the following morning) of a great meteor shower. But maybe this post will help? Though this year's Geminid Meteor Shower is diminished by the light of an 80% full Moon, until the wee hours, reading this great article, will help avid stargazers keep 2nd week of December on their dark sky calendar for future years. In 2022 Moon won't rise until 10pm and be 60% full, but for Geminid 2023, it will be a New Moon and this famously colorful meteor shower will be sure to dazzle all night long.

Now there's a great explanation for why the Geminid Meteor Shower, which has been growing in fame, is becoming an increasing productive shower: Phaeton 3200 the "source rock" of these particular meteors is back to being understood as more asteroid than "rocky" comet. The back and forth scientific debate can be attributed to misunderstanding what makes asteroid-sourced meteors possible. Since it orbits so close to our Sun, vibrations caused by tidal gravitational forces from our Sun, shake pebbles off the little body (3.5-mile diameter means near zero gravity -- an astronaut could jump into orbit from such a world), with a precious few, yet up to 200 per hour, ending up burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

For bodies this rocky, that orbit so close to our Sun, it's not just solar wind erosion that accounts for meteors anymore. In short, just because a body creates meteor showers, doesn't mean we should assume it has to be comet-like. Science!

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/geminids-best-meteor-shower/

Every mid-December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.

10/25/2021

When you come to stargaze with us, MAKE SURE you include time to also visit Fremont Indain State Park to the north of us near Richfield Utah. If you have to, blow-off Zion to make it happen! Here's why:

As humans, we’ve always looked up to the stars, to the planets, and wondered what they are, what ...

10/05/2021

Well it's about time NASA?!

For those who don't know Nancy Roman, one of the surprisingly few professional astronomers to work for NASA and the very first one when she started in the late 1950s, was the person who invented the idea of an orbital telescope. It was her clever scheme to get regular NASA engineers, administrators, and astronauts excited about astronomy and big telescopes. Before her it was a boys club who just wanted to make big things not quite entirely explode (aka launch rockets). She basically goaded them into it by saying "I bet you can't put a telescope in orbit!"

And that's how we got the Hubble Space Telescope, and soon the James Webb, not to mentions dozens of other orbiting research telescopes. Nancy died in 2018 at the age of 83. Maybe by her 100th birthday this new proposed telescope will be launched and it will help others at least find her Wikipedia page (can you now?)?

https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-confirms-roman-space-telescope-missions-flight-design-in-milestone-review/

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has successfully passed its critical design review, signaling that all design and developmental engineering work is now complete. “After seeing our extensive hardware testing and sophisticated modeling, an independent review panel has confirmed that the o...

09/22/2021

The Dark Rangers have been wide awake following the Netflix series (perhaps a little drawn out, but still well done) and all the press coverage we can find regarding SpaceX's Inspiration 4 mission.

So far this one clip seems to best capture this thrill of amateur space flight.

Please give this a watch, even if you are jaded or put-off by Branson and Bezos offering a few minutes and some meh vids of people goofing around in low gravity (basically the vomit-comet experience 1000s have had before). Like everything SpaceX does, this is more and better. There just something better about a view out a big window and what surprised me, is how much more of Earth you can see from being just a 100 miles higher than ISS.

https://twitter.com/DrSianProctor/status/1440406356670894080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1440406356670894080%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-10547318221265157794.ampproject.net%2F2109102127000%2Fframe.html

“The moment when me and my amazing crew, , , opened up the cupola for the first time, a true highlight of the mission. Make sure you tune into Countdown on to see more epic moments from space! https://t.co/AKmturr9D...

07/08/2021

Finally! High speed video (so it can be played smoothly in slow-mo) AND without camera cutting out at last second of Space-X booster landing on a drone ship.

Enjoy!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1412818236203102214?s=19

“High res landing Falcon landing video https://t.co/8CPuH87JYv”