Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Nov 29, 2005, at 7:22 AM, Julia Thompson wrote:
In the Phoenix area. So not so close. But I bet it's prettier where
your stepfather is. (For some definition of "pretty", anyway.)
Depends. The Northern Mohave Desert tends to shade a lot toward olive
drab, with pale rust basalt knurls all over the place. A couple years
back it was unusually wet, so there were quite a lot of wildflowers to
green things up, and the lichen had a banner year, deep forest and an
almost canary yellow all over the otherwise fairly conventional stones.
What this part of the state has to offer in abundance is almost
faultless nighttime skies. My lifelong love affair with astronomy began
here.
As for Phoenix … well, I've always preferred Tucson.
I think I might, as well, if I ever got to experience Tucson. :)
I love clear skies. My first memory of really, really starry skies was
when we visited my aunt in West Virginia. It was gorgeous. Then we
moved to a house that didn't have a whole lot of light pollution around
it at the time, and that was lovely. The last time I was there, though,
about 20 years after we'd moved there, it was pretty bad -- my house in
northwest Austin had almost as good seeing. :( We're out in a
less-developed area now, but I fear that in another 20 years, it'll be
the same old story. (As it is, forget the horizon in any direction
except east.)
Julia
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