Colorado’s astrotourism is showing the importance of dark skies

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LAKE CITY — Minute by minute, a deep purple sky streaked with waves of gold and pink across the horizon drifted into darkness, the last traces of the sun slipping below the jagged peaks of the eastern San Juan Mountains. Slowly, and then all at once, it emerged: the first star, faintly visible in a sky just beginning to embrace nightfall.

Phillip Virden, cast in a silhouette, stood below Arcturus, ready to point his laser beam from star to star, a couple dozen…