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7 Dark Sky National Parks Fantastic for Stargazing

See deep into space at these top spots, including Arches, Big Bend and Grand Canyon

By

Veronica Stoddart,

 
AARP
Comments
Published June 27, 2022
Great Basin, Arches and Voyageur National Park
Great Basin, Arches, and Voyageurs National Park
James Ronan/Getty Images/Steve Burns

Can’t afford to join a commercial space mission offered by Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson? Consider the next best thing: seeing a starry, starry night in a sea of darkness, unimpeded by artificial light, at one of the International Dark Sky Parks in the U.S. It’s a rare treat, since light pollution prevents nearly 80 percent of Americans from seeing the Milky Way from their homes.

The International Dark-Sky Association (IDSA) has certified 14 of the nation’s 63 national parks as dark sky destinations. So visitors can take full advantage of such visibility, many of them offer specialized after-dark programs, from astronomy festivals and ranger-led full-moon walks to star parties and astrophotography workshops. If you prefer to stargaze on your own at a park, the National Park Service recommends bringing a pair of 7-by-50 binoculars, a red flashlight, which enhances night vision, and a star chart, which shows the arrangement of stars in the sky.

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Here are seven of the IDSA-certified parks where you can appreciate how the heavens looked from the Earth before the dawn of electric light.

Great Arches at night
Getty Images

Arches National Park (Utah)​

If there’s one state stargazers should be sure not to miss, it’s Utah, which boasts the country’s greatest number of certified dark sky national parks, with five: Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion. Arches stands out with more than 2,000 signature sandstone arches that form dramatic backdrops for the celestial show overhead. For the best viewing spots, avoid the lights of Moab to the south and head north to the Balanced Rock picnic area, the Garden of Eden viewpoint, Panorama Point and the Windows section. Under the right conditions, you might even see Saturn’s rings with standard binoculars. Ranger-led stargazing programs, during which rangers introduce visitors to the wonders of the night sky followed by stargazing and telescope viewing, take place in spring and fall around the new moon at Panorama Point or the park’s visitor center. These events rotate between Arches and nearby Canyonlands.

Star trails at Big Bend National Park
Deb Snelson/Getty Images

Big Bend National Park (Texas)

Thanks to its remote desert location and low humidity, this sprawling park in southwestern Texas has the least light pollution of any other national park in the continental U.S. No wonder, as the song says, “The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.” You can attend one of Big Bend’s star parties, when amateur astronomers gather to observe the night sky together; take a guided moonlight walk; or use your binoculars on your own to enjoy an evening of meteor showers, constellation spotting or Milky Way viewing. On a clear night, countless stars will dazzle you, including from the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away.

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Bryce Canyon at night
Kotomi Ito/Getty Images

Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah)

Marry the world’s largest collection of hoodoos (irregular columns of rocks) with one of the country’s darkest night skies and you have pure magic. At Bryce you can watch the Milky Way slash a silvery arc across the sky while thousands of stars illumine the park’s otherworldly rock formations. Stargazing is serious business here. Park rangers and volunteer astronomers operate about 100 astronomy programs per year. They include constellation tours, when rangers with lasers point out constellations visible in the night sky, and one- to two-mile-long full moon hikes, when the interplay of shadows and moonlight lend the hoodoos an eerie glow. For an overdose of celestial majesty, plan your trip around the four-day Annual Astronomy Festival in late June and participate in a collective astronomy art project, which entails creating watercolor paintings of planets in our solar system and an astronomical art “masterpiece” to unveil on the last day of the festival.

Badwater Basin at night in Death Valley National Park
Jon Hicks/Getty Images

Death Valley National Park (California)

America’s driest national park — a sprawling 3.4-million-acre desert — makes an ideal setting for admiring the stars and, if you’re lucky, for spotting meteors. Death Valley nights are so dark that the International Dark-Sky Association classifies them at the highest (Gold Tier) level, meaning that light pollution is so low that you see “views close to what could be seen before the rise of cities.” Many heavenly bodies viewed from Death Valley aren’t visible with the naked eye anywhere else in the world. For an introduction to the cosmos, join a ranger program during the cooler winter to learn about topics including space science, planetary science, space exploration, light pollution and the lore surrounding our night skies. Or visit during the annual Dark Sky Festival each spring, which includes special ranger programs; guest speakers from organizations such as NASA; and the Exploration Fair, where scientists from NASA, Caltech, the SETI Institute and other groups offer demonstrations to engage visitors. If you’re on your own, head to Badwater Basin, Harmony Borax Works, Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes or Zabriskie Point, favorite spots for astrophotographers looking to capture their night images.

A person watching the Watching Milky Way in Grand Canyon National Park
Carlos Fernandez/Getty Images

Grand Canyon National Park (Arizona)

Yes, the iconic Grand Canyon, one of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders, is clearly the main attraction at this park. But stick around after dark and you’ll be rewarded with stellar views of another kind. See the Milky Way cast your shadow on the Earth on a moonless night. Or thrill to a tableau of star clouds, nebulae, meteor showers and even planets like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Key stargazing spots on the South Rim include Desert View Watchtower, a mecca for snapping award-worthy images of the watchtower with a Milky Way backdrop; Mather Point; and Moran and Lipan points, both right off of Desert View Drive. On the canyon’s less-visited North Rim, you can have the stars all to yourself at Bright Angel Point.

In mid-June, visitors can join a free star party on the South Rim with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and on the North Rim with the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix, to enjoy astronomy talks, constellation tours and telescope viewings. Night sky photography workshops and constellation talks take place throughout the year.​​

Great Basin at night
James Ronan/EyeEm/Getty Images

Great Basin National Park (Nevada)

What makes Great Basin such a stargazing superstar? It has the ideal conditions, with high elevation and low humidity. It offers rare deep-space viewing from the Great Basin Observatory, the first research-grade observatory built in a U.S. national park. And as one of the least visited parks — it had only 120,248 visitors in 2020 — you can admire the night skies with hardly anyone else around.

On clear, moonless nights, head to such popular viewing spots as the Baker Archaeological Site and Mather Overlook to be awed by countless stars and planets (note that stars twinkle but planets don’t), meteor showers, man-made satellites, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way. From May through September, astronomy programs offer ranger talks and full moon hikes, telescope viewing at the astronomy amphitheater and solar telescope viewing from the Lehman Caves Visitor Center. On select summer evenings, hop aboard the Great Basin Star Train in the nearby town of Ely, guided by Great Basin National Park’s Dark Rangers. Along the way, you can disembark and use high-powered telescopes to see distant planets and deep-space objects. Finally, come for the annual Astronomy Festival, Sept. 22-24, to enjoy guest speakers, photo workshops, telescope viewings and tours of the Great Basin Observatory.

Voyageurs National Park
Steve Burns/Getty Images

Voyageurs National Park (Minnesota)

Stars aren’t the only things that shine at this remote water-based park near the Canadian border. When conditions are right, the aurora borealis lights up the night sky with its shimmering streaks of blue, green, purple and red. While these rare light phenomena can’t be forecast, winter’s longer nights increase the chances of seeing them. While watching for the northern lights, keep a lookout for the Milky Way, satellites, shooting stars and other celestial objects. Voyageurs often hosts a three-day star party in August, with special ranger programs, Perseid meteor shower viewing, constellation tours and solar system walks.

​Award-winning travel writer Veronica Stoddart is the former travel editor of USA Today. She has written for dozens of travel publications and websites.​​​

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