Stargazers, Boy Scouts plan to set up Mount Potosi observatory

In a city famous for its nighttime glare, an organization that sounds like a contradiction in terms wants to build a new observatory and inspire the next generation of stargazers.

The Las Vegas Astronomical Society plans to partner with the Boy Scouts to install two telescope domes on Mount Potosi, about 30 miles southwest of the valley.

The observatory should be up and running next year, perhaps as early as February, said Astronomical Society President Jim Gianoulakis, who is spearheading the effort.

"I think we can touch a lot of kids with this," he said. "If it's my legacy, I'll be damned proud of that. I really will."

The idea was born about two months ago, when a doctor in North Carolina donated a high-end 14-inch telescope and mount to the Astronomical Society. Gianoulakis said the gift, from a Dr. Jim Hermann, is worth $50,000 to $60,000.

A few weeks ago, the society received another donation - two observatory domes, worth about $15,000, from a Minnesota-based company called Polydome.

Gianoulakis and company were in the early stages of looking for someplace to put their new equipment when they were approached by the Boy Scouts' Las Vegas Area Council.

Philip Eborn, director of support services for the area council, said the addition of the observatory will make the 1,100-acre Kimball Scout Reservation on Mount Potosi "one of the top two or three Boy Scout camps in the country."

He expects the new facility to be finished in time for the start of summer camp in June.

"Things like this are usually years in the planning," Gianoulakis said. "Three months ago, it wasn't even a dream yet."

But wait, an observatory? In Las Vegas? Isn't light pollution practically a tourism strategy here?

Las Vegas certainly isn't the ideal place to look at the stars, dark-sky advocate Scott Kardel said.

Just look at photographs of the Southwest taken from space, said Kardel, who serves as managing director of the Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association, a 24-year-old advocacy group dedicated to fighting light pollution. The lights of Las Vegas burn with a greater intensity than those in Tucson, Ariz., Phoenix or even Los Angeles.

"It's one of those places where people are trying to be excessive," Kardel said.

"The glow from Las Vegas can be seen from hundreds of miles away. In pristine, otherwise natural places, you can see that glow."

Gianoulakis knows all about the valley's bad astronomical reputation. He was born and raised in Las Vegas and remembers when the valley was separated into three bright pools at night - the Strip, downtown Las Vegas and Nellis Air Force Base.

"Now it's all one big field of light," he said. "It's pretty common for people to say, 'What can you possibly see in Las Vegas?' "

The truth is, you don't have to go very far to see stars in Southern Nevada. The Astronomical Society holds regular events at Spring Mountain State Park and the Red Rock Canyon visitor center, where you don't need a telescope to see the cloudy band of the Milky Way on a moonless night.

"We get 'wow' a lot," said Gianoulakis, who noted that there already is an observatory at the College of Southern Nevada campus in North Las Vegas.

But the conditions are far better at the scout camp, which is shielded from the city lights by two mountains. It's not where you would build an observatory to do serious scientific work, but it's dark enough and close enough to the valley to make it ideal for educational outreach, Gianoulakis said.

"It's not like we're going to have the Luxor flashlight pointed right at us," he said. "We can do everything we want to do from that site."

In addition to helping the area's roughly 20,000 Boy Scouts earn their astronomy merit badges, the Astronomical Society hopes to partner with the Clark County School District to bring stargazing to valley schools.

One idea is to let individual classes decide what they want the remote-controlled telescope to look at on a given night. Then the students can open an email the next day and look at the digital pictures they took of space.

Gianoulakis envisions two observatory domes connected by a central building on a 3,500-square-foot plot. One dome would contain a remote-controlled telescope equipped with cameras.

The other would hold a scope with a traditional eyepiece to give young people more of a hands-on experience.

That's how it happened for Gianoulakis. During a family trip to Southern California when he was 8, he got to look through an eyepiece at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and see the rings of Saturn.

"I was hooked," he said.

His parents soon bought him his first telescope, a 2½-inch Edmund Scientific good only for "looking at the moon and any planets you could find," he said.

Today he has a 12-inch scope under an 8-foot dome in the backyard of his home in the southwest valley, where he takes long-exposure photographs of distant stars and nebulae despite the light radiating from the Strip.

Gianoulakis said the Astronomical Society considered placing its donated telescope at some distant, unspoiled site and operating it by remote control.

"But it's just much more compelling to have this locally and help the local youth," he said.

Darkness advocate Kardel couldn't agree more.

The more we learn to appreciate the stars, the more we might be willing to make the changes necessary to see them better, he said.

"There is a value everywhere to trying to connect people to the night sky," Kardel said, even in a place that thrives on bright lights.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.