Kanab is in Top 10 Best Towns for Stargazing in the United States
Kanab is getting international recognition for being one of the best stargazing spots in the United States! Outforia ranked towns in the US by sky darkness, average cloud cover, elevation, access to recognized dark-sky areas (such as national parks) and trip ease. Torrey near Capitol Reef NP came in first in the nation, followed by Kanab in 8th place and Moab in 9th. You can see the complete list here: Will Tonight Be Good for Stargazing? | Outforia.
Cache Valley Daily conducted an interview with Carl Borg, an outdoor expert and founder of the international Outforia website. Here is a brief excerpt from the interview regarding Utah’s dark skies. The full article is available here: Utah town claims top honors as the best place for nighttime stargazing in the United States | News | cachevalleydaily.com
“Utah works so well for stargazing because it gives travelers the best of both worlds — access to genuinely dark skies, without forcing them to base their whole trip somewhere remote or impractical,” Borg remarked after reviewing the result of the Outforia study.
“Torrey is a good example. You’re close to the darker skies around Capitol Reef, but you still have a proper town to return to, which makes it easier to check conditions, plan your night and avoid some of the risks that come with heading out unprepared.
“Kanab and Moab are similar. They show why Utah has become such a strong destination for night-sky travel,” he explains. “Visitors can build a whole trip around stargazing, rather than treating it as something they squeeze in at the end of the day.”
Helping maintain Kanab’s dark skies is one of SVO’s missions, and the impetus for our Kane County Friends of the Night Sky Program. This free, voluntary program assists Kane County business owners with information about dark sky friendly exterior lighting. Businesses that adopt night sky friendly lighting are featured in our business directory and receive a sticker to display at their business location.
To request a free lighting inventory at your business location, contact us at: info@stellarvistaobservatory.org
If you are a homeowner in Kane County and would like to learn more about dark sky friendly outdoor lighting, please attend our next free Curious Cosmos lecture on July 15th at 6pm at the Kanab City Library in the Multipurpose Room. More information is below in our Upcoming Events section.
Event Round Up
SVO’s free public star party took place on Thursday, June 12th at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. It was our biggest star party ever at the state park with well over 50 people in attendance! We saw Jupiter, the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Sombrero Galaxy, and discussed satellites, red giants, aliens, and more.
In a non-official capacity that showcased his many talents, SVO’s Eric Sims was recently invited to be a guest speaker/guy-with-a-guitar at Kanab City Library Story Time. Eric discussed the asteroid that hit the earth (the kids have been learning all about dinosaurs lately). The kids also learned about our Sun and the phenomena of sunspots while SVO’s electronic Seestar Telescope was employed to safely provide a close-up view of the fiery orb.
Upcoming Events
Please join us for our next Curious Cosmos Lecture on July 15th at 6pm at the Kanab City Library in the multipurpose room. Natalie Brannon will be our guide and describe simple steps we all can take personally to help preserve our precious view of the cosmos.
Light pollution is reversible! Learn how following basic principles with your outdoor lighting can help preserve your view of the dark starry skies over Kane County.
Photo of the Month
This month’s featured photo was taken by Michael McKeon.
This beautiful image was taken on June 10, 2026 in Lincoln City, Oregon. It features the Oregon coast lit up by Venus at top center and Jupiter below. To the right are Castor and Pollux, the two brightest objects in the Gemini constellation. Castor appears as one of the brightest stars in the night sky but is actually made up of six individual stars which are three binary pairs.
If you have a great star or night sky photo that you would like to share with our audience, we would love to include it in our monthly newsletter. Please send your photos to info@stellarvistaobservatory along with your name and the names of key objects in the photo.
Wood and Other Universal Materials
by Ella Elman, SVO
As a former forest ecologist, I have a fascination with trees. I love spending time in forests, and I especially love the giant trees of Washington state where I lived for more than 25 years. It’s incredible to look out from a peak in the Pacific Northwest and see millions of trees, stretching as far as the eye can see.
Here on Earth, we view trees as a renewable resource, covering a third of our land area. However, wood is considered one of the rarest materials in the known universe! While we think of gold and diamonds as being rare, they exist on many other planets and asteroids. Wood—a complex organic polymer—is currently known to exist only on Earth. Let’s look at what the universe is really made of, and which materials are truly rare.
The universe is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with everything else making up only a tiny fraction. Hydrogen makes up 75% of all mass in the universe, with helium making up 24%. These two elements were created in the Big Bang, while the other heavier elements were formed later inside stars or supernovae. Interestingly enough, on Earth, helium is extremely rare, with all of our helium coming from natural gas deposits. Earth’s formation involved intense heating, which caused volatile elements like hydrogen and helium to be depleted. Our crust, mantle and atmosphere contain only trace amounts of helium.
The remaining 1% of the universe is made up of all heavier elements including oxygen, silicates, carbon compounds, iron and nickel. These elements make up all of the solid objects including rocks, planets, dust, asteroids and, of course, living matter. Iron in particular is one of the most common metals in the universe because massive stars fuse to create iron and supernovae eject huge amounts of it.
What about precious metals, diamonds, minerals and other gemstones that we consider to be rare materials? Let’s start with gold. Gold is indeed one of the rarest naturally occurring elements in the universe, as it is formed through neutron star collisions and created in some supernovae. These events are incredibly rare, so gold is too. There is roughly one atom of gold per one trillion atoms of hydrogen!
Other gemstones such as quartz, garnet, peridot and topaz are made from silicon, oxygen, aluminum, magnesium and iron. These elements are very common in the universe but require tectonic pressure and the ability to cool slowly inside a planet’s crust. As a result, they are mostly found in rocky planets, moons, or large asteroids.
Diamond is a unique material that requires high carbon concentrations, extreme pressure and slow cooling to form. As a result, it can be found inside rocky planets, large asteroids and also certain stars! White dwarf stars can crystallize into diamond-like carbon, as their carbon‑oxygen core is under immense pressure. The carbon and oxygen atoms lock into a crystalline lattice that is structurally similar to a diamond and cools over billions of years. The most famous known example to date is BPM 37093, a famous white dwarf nicknamed Lucy (after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”) whose core is estimated to be 90% crystallized. It is estimated to contain about 10 billion trillion trillion carats. Imagine an entire star made of diamond!
And yet, a star made of diamond is still not as rare as a tree.
Free Public Star Parties and Events
Please join us for free star parties and events this summer!
- Wednesday, July 15, 2026 – Our next Curious Cosmos Science Talk is slated for 6:00 pm at the Kanab City Library in the multipurpose room. Come to learn about the preservation of dark skies with presenter Natalie Brannon of SVO.
- Friday, July 17, 2026 – Kanab Center Front Lawn. 9pm. Watch the beautiful waxing crescent Moon set as the Milky Way rises over Kanab. Open and globular star clusters of the summer sky will be primary observing targets!
- Wednesday, August 12,2026 – Jackson Flat Reservoir Boat Launch Parking Area. 9:15pm. The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight! It’s a new Moon, so viewing conditions should be excellent!
Our events calendar can be seen at: Public Star Parties | Stellar Vista Observatory.