NYT Vocabulary: Night Skies

At 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake caused a citywide power outage in Los Angeles. I lived there at the time and was among the many Angelenos who made their way outside, looked up and found a spectacular sight: a vast blanket of stars that had been blotted out for generations by light pollution. It was reported that some people were so ​ (a)   by the diaphanous Milky Way, they called 911 and the Griffith Observatory to report strange, unidentified objects in the sky. I only remember being awe-struck.

• bewildered
• bamboozled
• bifurcated
• bewitched

Roughly 99 percent of the people living in the United States and Europe see only a dim approximation of stars in the night sky, nothing close to the bright firmament that our ancestors witnessed before humans harnessed electricity. The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, the study that reported the findings, also found that 83 percent of the world’s population cannot see a naturally dark sky because of the light ​ (a)   cities.

• emanating from
• eliminated by
• scattered by 
• shining on

Armed with those statistics, I found myself again looking skyward last October, this time lying face up on a long stone slab at Arches National Park in Utah. Surrounded by strangers, I was trying to locate the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters, and our nearest spiral galaxy, Andromeda. My first trip in two years since the pandemic required a destination that felt new and otherworldly. As it turns out that is Utah with its biblical terrain and preternatural cobalt sky, a sky that also happens to be ​ (a)   with stars at night.

• ablaze
• aloft
• engraved
• furrowed

Arches National Park is one of 200 International Dark Sky Places, each designated by the Arizona-based International Dark Sky Association (IDA), a group of astronomers, biologists, and conservationists that ​ (a)   awareness of light pollution and its effects on wildlife, climate change and human health.

• promotes
• diminishes
• measures
• assesses

For Bettymaya Foott, an astrophotographer and the director of engagement for IDA, the ​ (a)   effects of light pollution are profound: “To me one of the most significant ways it affects us as humans is that it decreases our connection with the universe,” she said. “With all of the divisions going on, looking up to the night sky connects us to the biggest mystery in our world and helps us get in touch with the fact that we are all humans on spaceship earth.”

• detrimental
• fortuitous
• short-term
• significant

Which short summary below would you say BEST captures what the piece is about?

• Armed with a compass and several granola bars, one Utah writer set out on a week-long stargazing trip.

• To the dismay of astronomers, there are no more dark sky places in the United States due to severe light pollution.

• It isn't as easy as it once was to find the night sky. In search of the Milky Way, our writer headed to Utah, which has the densest concentration of Dark Sky places in the world.

• According to many scientists and astronomers, stargazers are able to see night skies more clearly than ever with new technology.