Texas Tidbits : McDonald Observatory

The stars at night are big and bright (clap, clap, clap, clap) deep in the Heart of Texas!! It's hard to imagine a place where the stars would be brighter than atop the 6778 ft peak of Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of Far West Texas. There sits the University of Texas-McDonald Observatory. It's so dark at night that one can literally not see one's hand in the front of one's face. The seclusion of Mount Locke offers maximum star-gazing opportunities. The Observatory, despite its remote location (or maybe because of it) hosts more than 180,000 visitors a year. that's 350 per day. I have traveled about 4/5 of Texas' 267,000 square miles and have never been to the McDonald Observatory, despite it being a life-long dream. Maybe some day. Stars. Big and bright. Indeed.