It exists to give people nights under the stars they never forget. I plan astro vacations around real darkness: the kind of sky nobody comes home from unchanged.
The best way to protect the night sky is to show people why it is worth protecting.
Dark Sky Dispatch did not start as a business. It started with one photograph in 2013, and a decade of driving into the dark with a camera.
I finished law school and, not long after, found myself in Zion National Park pointing a camera at the night sky for the first time. What came back on the screen was the Milky Way, a sight I will never forget.
I had been standing underneath that my entire life and had never once seen it. That is the part that got me. Not the photograph. The fact that it had always been there.
I went to Norway looking for the aurora and got my first solar storm on Christmas night. Watching the sky come alive for hours under real darkness changed how I see the night for good, and from then on I was quietly building trips around one question: how dark does it get here?
By 2018 I was no longer an attorney. I was travel blogging full time and going further out on purpose. The Maldives, then New Zealand, both places where there is very little standing between you and the sky. Both left me wanting to know how dark it could actually get.
I moved to Tucson, Arizona, and found out what a luxury it is to have a Bortle 4 sky just outside the back door. No drive, no planning, just step outside.
Not long after, I bought my first telescope and picked up astronomy properly. Having a decent sky within reach every night changes what you do with your evenings.
I gave up a fixed address and turned my attention to dark skies here in the US: the Adirondacks, the Upper Peninsula, Montana. I am amazed at the night skies we have right here at home.
I launched Dark Sky Dispatch to give people a night under the stars they never forget. Nobody protects a sky they have never seen.
These days I carry an SQM-L and take a real reading everywhere I go, in mag/arcsec², tracking dark skies across the country.
All fifty states, and thirty countries and territories across six continents.
For anyone who skipped to the bottom.
The thing I keep coming back to is that almost nobody needs a plane ticket to see this. Most people just need to know where to point the car, and which night to go.
That is the whole reason this exists. Let me plan yours, or start with the free guide and find one yourself.