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In Michigan, April is the month of spring rain, budding trees, and warmer afternoons. It is also the month of International Dark Sky week. Dark sky week, from April 13 to April 20, is a celebration of the nighttime and preserving darkness for ecosystems and stargazing hosted by the International Dark-Sky Association. For most, preserving dark skies may not sound like a “big deal.” For those in regions with darker skies, it can often be the very reason they live there in the first place.
Clayton Kessler, an amateur astronomer, moved from Woodhaven to Manchester for the dark skies. Kessler has an observatory in his backyard that he built himself equipped with a telescope and astronomy camera. Kessler had been interested in astronomy since he was a teenager and has been gazing at the cosmos for decades. So for him, a dark sky is vital to the entire hobby.
In Woodhaven, Kessler said that you could “look up and count all the stars you’d see on one hand.” Woodhaven being a part of the greater Metropolitan region of Detroit, it took some driving to reach a dark sky. Kessler used to drive an hour to set up his telescope for a stargazing session “all hours of the night” only to drive an hour back and wake up in the morning for work…