Longing to Gaze Upon the Milky Way from LA

By ALYSIA GRAY PAINTER

Updated 1:55 PM PDT, Tue, Mar 10, 2009

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Of course, we can see the moon -- generally -- from the center of Los Angeles, but the whole spread of stars is another story. Every person who has ever lived in a lit-up metropolis knows that one trade-off is an unshowier night sky. The 11PM sky seen from the corner of Hollywood and Highland, vs., say, the middle of cornfield somewhere in South Dakota, is almost an entirely different thing. It's like we need to install a giant, mile-wide dimmer for all of SoCal.

Now an artist and an astronomer, based in New York, are wondering if parts of their city might go dark, not permanently, not forever, but just to give urbanites better access to the heavens. Katja Aglert, the artist, is pursuing a minute of darkness in Times Square, which has us curious: can that even happen? And how strange and wonderful would that be?

We know, there are arguments. Drive up to the mountains. Head up the 99. Hit the Mojave. That's fine, and they're good suggestions indeed, but many people, for various reasons, can't pop out of the city on a sky-watching jaunt. Especially, we're guessing, the kid faction. And kids looking at constellations seems like something that should be happening on a regular basis, and something that, outside of our biggest cities, has been happening since kids and constellations first came to be.

Maybe the New York plan won't make its way west, but we think a conversation about it has to be positive. C'mon, spying Orion or Andromeda over the Hollywood Sign, or the Santa Monica Pier, might be a truly photo-worthy moment.