You check the light-pollution map the way other people check the weather. You know the exact junction where the orange glow finally drops off the mirror, and you know it is fifty-five minutes from your front door. DARK SKY CHASER, arched in engraved capitals across a star-atlas plate. And along the ruled footline beneath it, the whole arrangement stated as plainly as a chart caption: ONE HOUR TO DARK SKY. Inside the plate's graticule ring, with two meridians sweeping through it, stands Ursa Major, drawn as a solid heraldic charge, the way a 17th-century atlas would have engraved it. And set on the bear's body: the seven stars of the Plough, joined star to star. The figure the ancients drew, and the asterism you actually navigate by, in the same image. Nothing cute, nothing mystical. A chart, for someone who uses one.
Soft and cozy with a hood for the drive out past the last streetlight.
For the person who drives out. And for whoever is buying for him and only knows that he disappears for a night with the telescope: that is the right fact to have. This is the one.
Clear skies, and a short drive.
