"You go out because it's just dusk, and you get this wonderful view of the stars coming out," Sucke said. "And particularly if the moon isn't out, a billion stars come out and the Milky Way looks like a cloud, it's so bright. And you see these shooting stars. And then there's this amazing laser thing, this golden beam. It doesn't diverge; it's exactly the same all the way up and they tell you it goes up 60 miles. It only appears to go up 1,000 feet or so, but it's hard to picture it. Then you're on for an hour then you're off and there's only nuts and things here that you end up eating because you don't have anything to do in the hour that you're off except warm up, and pretty soon the night is over and you get to see the sunrise."


The spotters are an interesting varied group- mostly college students, but- as the article points out- also some retired people... pretty much all of them have appreciation or love of astronomy... you would have to to be willing to stand at 14000 feet in wind and subfreezing temperatures for just 10 dollars an hour.