We're here in downtown Durango, right off of Second Avenue to take some sky quality meter readings tonight and see how dark our skies are.

The sky quality meter works by essentially looking at a large swath of the sky, and there's a little dial there that collects light.

They're very sensitive pieces of equipment.

Technically, we're going to take six meter readings, and then we're going to throw out one of them, average the other five together.

19.44.

19.64.

We're going to write that down.

The average of this site here is 19.50.

The way that the scale works is the higher the number, the closer to 22, the better you are.

So the closer to zero, the worse the more light pollution you are.

We are a small city, so we do have our fair share of light pollution, but it's still really dark.

Some old leadership had the forethought to really try and build in, some best practices before dark skies had really taken off, so as Durango in particular has grown, it stayed relatively dark.

Why is it important to preserve the dark skies?

You have the health and safety aspect for humans.

Every culture has its stories of the stars and constellations.

There's wonder to be had there.