Every once in a while on a camping trip, I can look up at the sky and see the Milky Way. Some state or National Parks are far enough away from city lights that I can see the cloudy cross-section of our home galaxy cutting a swath across the sky. The darkness of a sky is a measure of the remoteness of a campsite. If your camping goal is to get away from the manmade world, you may find yourself in an ideal place for stargazing.
The video above was produced FSU Digital Production student Ian McGorty when he was my intern. He is now a WFSU employee. After a process of story pitches, research, and phone calls, I found myself driving with him to Saint George Island State Park for a stargazing adventure. There, we met Marvin “Skip” Marlin and Richard Millet of the Astronomical Society of Bay County.
We conducted the interview on a platform built specifically to set up telescopes and look up. It’s part of a larger effort to make the park an astronomical destination.
Making Saint George Island an International DarkSky Park
The Astronomical Society of Bay County is working with the park to earn a DarkSky designation from DarkSky International. An International DarkSky Park is one that is far from large, brightly lit cities, and which uses lighting in a way that minimizes light pollution. Richard and Skip argue that Saint George Island State Park fits the criteria.
For one thing, the park is far from urban centers. “Tallahassee’s 50 miles, I believe,” Skip said, “and I would say that Panama City is about 60 miles that way.”
Many of those miles are filled with unlit conservation lands. Over half-a-million acres of Apalachicola National Forest lies between Tallahassee and Saint George Island. Directly across Apalachicola Bay from the island is Tate’s Hell State Forest. “I know people that go out into Tate’s Hell [to stargaze],” Richard said. “Bring lots of bug spray with you.”
Additionally, the park already minimizes light usage. The beaches of Saint George Island are nesting sites for sea turtles, which bury their eggs in beach sand. When baby turtles hatch at night, they look for moon and star light reflected on the ocean waves. In places where beaches have buildings and street lights behind them, the turtles might head in the wrong direction. The longer newly hatched turtles are on land, the more vulnerable they are to predators such as ghost crabs and seagulls.
A minimally lit park helps a number of other species, from migrating birds traveling to coastal habitats to fireflies and other night-flying insects.
Five tips for stargazing in north Florida
The park first applied for DarkSky designation in 2017, but, per Skip, that application “had to be modified due to the changes in the Park caused by Hurricane Michael.” Skip is a contributing member of DarkSky International, and he is coordinating with Park Manager Josh Hudson to gather and organize data to re-apply in 2026.
We interviewed Richard and Skip while we still had light. As the sun set, they started pointing their telescopes up. Here are a few astronomy tips they shared with us, whether you can make it to a dark sky spot or not.
1. Start with binoculars
“First thing somebody says is, ‘what kind of telescope should I get?'” Skip said. “And the first thing I say is, don’t get one.”
Astronomy is like any hobby that requires specialized gear: it can get expensive. Skip recommends starting with binoculars rather than spend money on a telescope. They’re easier to use, and you can still see an enhanced view of the stars. A few years ago, someone gave our family a pair of stargazing binoculars, which are a little more powerful than my regular birdwatching pair. Not only do they require less set up than even a basic telescope, but I use ours for wildlife watching. They’re also more portable than a telescope, which makes them more convenient to bring camping.
If some people feel like they’d like to see more than what binoculars will show them, and they don’t mind getting technical, they can still choose to upgrade.
2. Stargazing apps
There are several free apps that can show you the current positions of stars, constellations, and other celestial bodies. These include Night Sky, Stargazer, and Stellarium. Experienced avocational astronomers such as Richard and Skip can navigate the sky with star charts, but even they find the apps useful.
“I know generally what I’m looking at,” Skip said, “but it will help me sort of dial in to exactly what I’m looking for.”
Some of the apps have additional features if you upgrade to a paid version. One such feature is a forecast for sky clarity. I know I’ve been thwarted by clouds when wanting to see a full moon or ISS flyover. But, even on a cloudless night, atmospheric conditions or a bright moon might reduce the number of stars you might see. An alternative to upgrading is a free site such as Clear Sky Charts. Here is a map of Clear Sky Charts for Florida, including one for Saint George Island.
3. Use a red light around your telescopes/ binoculars
The post-sunset footage in the video is bathed in red light. It provides a novel ambience. But it has a function as well.
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and found that you can see fairly well in the darkness of your home? And then you turn on a light, even for a short moment, and afterwards you find it much harder to see in the dark? If we turn off our lights for 20-40 minutes, a protein called Rhodopsin becomes active in our eyes. This is what allows us to see in dim light. A bright light causes the protein to photobleach, reducing our night vision until it regenerates.
Why is this important to astronomers? To best see what a telescope can show us, we need this dim light vision. Red light does not neutralize rhodopsin, allowing astronomers to see their immediate environment and still see the cosmos in their eyepieces.
Skip and Richard had red-light lamps, and some flashlights and LED lanterns (like my family uses while camping) have red-light modes. It’s a common feature on headlamps as well. If you camp at a DarkSky park, you may have astronomy-friendly lighting already in your camping gear.
4. Arrive one to two hours after sunset
The astronomy we see in the video takes place in the early evening. This was mainly to serve our cameras. We recorded interviews and scenic shots while the sun was up, and Skip and Richard got to work shortly after sunset.
Many astronomers wouldn’t have shown up until around the time we started wrapping up. In a coastal location like Saint George Island, biting insects like mosquitos and no-see-ums are active at sunset. We got a little chewed up during our shoot, and in the video you can hear coughing caused by swallowing some of the swarm.
Also, the sky takes a while to fully darken after sunset.
5. Not all stargazing needs a truly dark sky
You might be reading this from Tallahassee, or an even larger city. If you’ve been wanting to start an astronomy hobby, you don’t necessarily have to drive fifty miles to explore the cosmos.
“If you want to see the moon, the planets, things like that, just about anywhere it works, ” Richard said. “It’s when you start trying to see deep sky objects… where dark skies really make a difference.”
The brighter the object, the more likely we can see it in a city. And also, the larger the city, the more potential light pollution. When I moved from Miami to Tallahassee in the 1990s, I noticed that I could see more stars in the sky. Years later, I found myself camping on an Apalachicola River sandbar just north of Wewahitchka, I saw many, many more.
When I last paddled RiverTrek, I planned to try and photograph the milky way over that sandbar. I read up on long exposure and camera settings to make this shot happen, and then the moon was too full to see many stars. I could have checked the visibility on Clear Sky Charts, but it’s not like Riverkeeper would have rearranged the trip for stargazing purposes.
Astro-photography
If you start down the astronomical hobby path, you may find yourself taking photos of celestial objects thousands of light years away. Here are a few pics Skip and Richard shared with us:
“This is a diffuse nebula south of Orion’s belt in the Orion constellation,” Skip says. “On a clear night, it is visible to the naked eye and is probably one of the most photographed objects in the night sky. It’s the middle star in the sword of Orion and appears ‘fuzzy’ to the naked eye.”
“This is an interesting open cluster…7,500 light years distant,” Skip says. “It is in the constellation Perseus and according to Wikipedia, there are over 300 blue-white supergiant stars in each of the clusters.”
“This is one we viewed on the [Saint George Island] platform I believe,” Skip says. “It is another open star cluster and at 444 light years, one of the closest Messier objects to Earth. These stars show nebulosity when photographed properly, but it’s only a faint haze in my photo.”
Not all astronomy needs a dark sky, as we see here. Richard used a solar telescope, which allows astronomers to safely view the sun. Do not try to look at the sun with any telescope not specifically designed to look at the sun.
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