As a crescent moon sank into the forest, I looked high above the cabin behind me to see just how dark it was getting. Staring back at me was the Beehive Cluster, a swarm of stars that's a surefire sign of dark skies. From here, a west-facing deck deep in the woods of southern New Brunswick, Canada, there was nothing but silence, a touch of frost, and some of the darkest skies in the Americas.
What brought me here wasn't just astronomy but astrotourism. "The U.S. has just announced an astrotourism project along U.S. Route 89, from Canada to Mexico," said Stéphane Picard, an astronomer and astrophotographer at Cliff Valley Astronomy. "It's impressive, but it stretches a thousand miles. We'll have six dark-sky sites within 100 miles [160 kilometers] — and dozens of unique astrotourism experiences."
