Capturing images of the night sky depends on light. Hours and hours of repeated, short exposures are needed to collect enough light from distant nebulae and stars for photos to turn out. And that requires darkness.

That’s why amateur astrophotographer and astronomy enthusiast Steven Davis started going to the area outside of Burnsville that would later become Mayland Community College’s Earth to Sky Park: He was seeking darkness. The park is a designated International Dark Sky Place, the first of only three in the state — a location with minimal light pollution dedicated to preserving views of the night sky. Eventually, he began working part-time as a host at the park’s Bare Dark Sky Observatory, teaching visitors about space and helping them behold the sky both with the naked eye and with telescopes.

“People come up here and say, ‘Why are y’all so far out in the middle of nowhere?’ ” Davis says. The park sits on a ridge west of the Spruce Pine quartz mine, north of Mount Mitchell. “Well, the middle of nowhere is where it’s still dark.”

• • •

Davis is no stranger to remote places. He calls himself a country boy, one who was accustomed to looking up outside his childhood home in Cleveland County and seeing the Milky Way.

As a kid, he was intrigued by the moon landings. He remembers being about 10, standing in his living room after lunch, watching a grainy video of astronauts stepping onto the moon. “You had to get right close to the TV,” he says. “The closer you got, the more real it was. You could reach into that box and help [the astronaut] down the ladder.”

Steven Davis, a host at Bare Dark Sky Observatory outside Burnsville, teaches visitors about the wonders of the night sky using telescopes like “Sam,” the largest of its kind dedicated to public use in the Southeast. photograph by Tom Moors

But it was a couple years later that Davis really got into astronomy. In 1974, astronomers dubbed Kohoutek “the comet of the century” and promised a spectacular sight. It turned out to be not nearly as bright as predicted. “It was a bust,” Davis says. “But it did get me interested.”

That Christmas, he got his first telescope from Sears. It didn’t have a motor to track objects across the sky, so about the time he got the lens focused on something, it would move out of view. He’d pull out the catalog again, coveting the fancier telescopes with tracking gears.

“I was enamored with them going to the moon,” says Davis, who grew up in Cleveland County in the era of U.S. space exploration. Today, he shares that adoration with the observatory’s visitors. photograph by Tom Moors

Still, he’d take his ’scope into the backyard and look up. Indoors, he’d watch Star Trek, longing to be Scotty, the ship’s engineer. He’d also pore over a children’s encyclopedia series called The New Book of Knowledge, hunting for information on planets and astronomical wonders.

Davis grew up and settled in neighboring Rutherford County, where he became an automotive engineering manager. The work suited him: He’d been building and tinkering with things all his life, from a homemade hang glider that he crash-landed off his family’s barn to woodworking and rebuilding cars with family members.

The grounds and parking area of Bare Dark Sky Observatory at Mayland Earth to Sky Park are open to the public 24/7 for stargazing.  photograph by Tom Moors

He started giving astronomy talks around western North Carolina, lugging a hefty telescope to give folks their own glimpse of the night sky. He restored telescopes and even crafted some of his own before he could afford the ones he longed for. He eventually built his own observatory in South Toe, a small Yancey County township not far from the Bare Dark Sky Observatory. But the park has added benefits that continue to draw him there, too: He gets to show visitors things they wouldn’t have known to look for and teach them about what they’re seeing.

“I like watching people get that epiphany,” he says, “and saying, ‘Think about what you just did. In the case of our closest galaxy neighbor, it takes over two and a half million years for that light to get here, and it’s trudged through countless days and nights to arrive at your eye.’ ”

• • •

At one of the observatory’s Community Viewing nights, Davis chats with visitors as the sun sinks ever lower behind the surrounding mountains. He shows them “Sam,” the enormous telescope that dominates the center of the observatory and is the largest of its kind dedicated to public use in the Southeast.

But he’s not all business. He asks folks where they drove in from. Tells jokes. Talks about local doughnut shops. (His favorite is Davis Donut House — no relation — in Forest City.)

As the glow beyond the mountains dims, Davis points out Jupiter and Venus, the first specks of light to appear in the darkening sky. Later, folks will climb an eight-foot ladder to peer through Sam’s eyepiece at Jupiter’s rust-colored bands.

During presentations at Community Viewing Nights, Davis explains that one tablespoon of neutron star matter is heavier than nearby Mount Mitchell. photograph by Tom Moors

Once the darkness has settled in, Davis points out the constellation Ursa Major, a bear with a long, crooked tail. “The bears at my house do not look like that,” he quips.

He also mans the smaller telescope, pulling up galaxies and star clusters for folks to see. Even after a lifetime of viewing the stars, he’s excited to see them every time. When a colleague operating Sam pulls up Messier 5, a cluster of ancient stars, he can’t resist taking a look. “Imagine what it would be like if Earth were around one of those stars,” he says. “It’d never be dark.”

Davis finds sharing this lifelong passion with others uplifting. Once, a young woman using a wheelchair came to a Community Viewing Night with her family. For folks who can’t climb the ladder, the observatory has an automated telescope that downloads images to a tablet. But Davis wanted to show her more. He asked her if she’d like to see Saturn, not on a screen but with her own eyes. He pulled it up in the smaller telescope she could reach. She leaned in and gasped. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “I can see the rings!”

As she turned to her father and told him it was the most wonderful night of her life, Davis’s eyes welled with tears.

• • •

As long as there are dark skies, Davis will continue capturing images of the cosmos. He calls it an addiction. Astrophotography is a technical challenge that appeals to the engineer in him. But it’s also an art. His work has earned national recognition, including from NASA.

He takes most of his photos at his personal observatory. But he still likes to visit the Bare Dark Sky Observatory on clear nights when he’s not hosting. “Some nights, I sneak over here, and I just sit and look up at my friends,” he says, gesturing skyward. “You do this long enough, you start telling time by the stars. I look up, and I see those old familiar patterns that I saw as a child. It’s comforting to know that some things didn’t change, that ��� I can sit here and just look, like I’m a young man again.”

Time marches on, but when you tell it by the night sky, a lifetime flies by in the blink of an eye. Light from distant galaxies tells a tale millions of years old. It’s a story Davis likes to watch unfold again and again — the saga of our infinite universe, shining bright.

Bare Dark Sky Observatory at Mayland Earth to Sky Park
66 Energy Exchange Drive
Burnsville, NC 28714
(828) 470-7584
mayland.edu