Badlands Observatory

Attention Educators - Announcing "Dark Skies, Bright Minds" Remote Observing Program.

Badlands Observatory is located within the town of Quinn, SD (pop 72), which is about 6 mi. east of Wall, SD (pop 834), and about 60 mi. east of Rapid City, SD (pop 55,000). Quinn itself is located on the very northern edge of Badlands National Park. The name was derived from Ma-koo-si-tcha, or "land bad" by the Lakota people. The Badlands have become world famous for their rich history and stark beauty, as well as being a veritable paradise for Paleontologists, by containing one of the largest deposits of vertebrate fossils anywhere. It is not often mentioned that this area also contains some of the darkest skies available in North America. It is known that dark skies are a vanishing natural resource, and this can easily be verified by examining night time NASA satellite images of the Earth. With the exception of minor sky glow in the direction of Wall and Rapid City, the skies at Quinn regularly yield unaided eye magnitudes around +6.5, or better. Badlands Observatory has been able to take advantage of this resource through cooperative action taken by the City of Quinn, and the West River Electric Association. They have voluntarily replaced and/or altered existing street light fixtures so that very little light is scattered into the night sky.

CONTENTS
Observatory Tour	Telescope Making
Scientific Work at Badlands Observatory - Observation Summary Page	Who Is Ron Dyvig?
Educational Outreach	Acknowledgments
Public Access	Contact Badlands Observatory
Remote Access	Links
Image Gallery	See SD Public TV's episode on Badlands Observatory
History	"Star Gazing": An article on Badlands Observatory Courtesy of South Dakota's Electric Cooperatives
Looking for Killer Asteroids Badlands Astronomers Make Heavenly Find	Rapid City high school student wins 2002 Science Fair for Astronomy Project
Badlands Observatory "Clear Sky Clock"

Stardust Mission - NASA's amazing mission to capture comet dust and return it to Earth! Stardust Spacecraft encountered the comet on January 2, 2004. Of special interest, is that Badlands Observatory providing very useful telescopic observational data to NASA on the comet's position.

Webmaster: Tom Durkin (service provided by SD Space Grant Consortium)
If you have questions, comments or suggestions regarding this website, please refer them to Ron Dyvig at Badlands Observatory