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Stargazing

Escape the hustle and bustle of modern life and turn your eyes to the skies. Find the best night sky viewing spots in Southern California and learn how to get ready for the best shows in the galaxy.

A fish eye camera lens shows a meteor streaking across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower.
In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower as a photographer wipes moisture from the camera lenses Friday, August 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. | NASA/Bill Ingalls
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Geminid Meteor Shower in Fred C. Babcock/Cecil M. Webb Wildlife with trees silhouetted.
From early January to late December, Southern California is filled with star-studded shows — in the sky! Here are a few tips to get the most out of the experience.
Perseid Meteor Shower
The biggest — and widely considered the best — meteor showers of the year will be peaking this week and weekend, starting around midnight on August 12 through 14. Here are the best places to catch this celestial show in Southern California.
Orbit Pavilion | NASA JPL-Caltech
Southern California is a wonderland for the outer space enthusiast. Space exploration's influence on SoCal can be found all over  — sometimes in unexpected places. 
Night sky over the Rae Lakes
Truly dark places in California are harder and harder to find. But we found some.
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There are rules to group stargazing. They're simple, but they're important.
Palomar
You might not think of Southern California as being very interplanetary, but when it comes down to it, Houston and Cape Canaveral have nothing on us.
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Here are nine High Desert places for watching those heavenly bodies, including one site that's the darkest we've ever mentioned.
Dark skies in Joshua Tree National Park.
Here are seven of our favorite Low Desert spots to contemplate your local portion of the universe.
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Kern County still offers one of the best places in Southern California where you can get away from the lights and see the Universe.
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With some of the haziest air quality found in California, the Inland Empire might not strike you as a place where stargazing is possible.
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Urban lights have encroached on the county's dark skies since the mid-20th Century, but there are still a lot of stars to gaze at -- enough that some locales are home to astro-tourism businesses.
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Orange County isn't exactly a stargazers' destination of choice, but there are places where you can see more than a few stars.
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