Milky Way season is just about over here in the Northern Hemisphere. I had planned to take a short trip this week to around Lake Tahoe, with some nighttime side trips into Nevada to try out some new kinds of Milky Way photography, but the wildfires killed that idea—and by the time the smoke subsides it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get a decent view. So for now I’ll go ahead and post the second picture I took in April during a visit to Anza Borrego: a panoramic view that shows not only a large section of the Milky Way, but also the house and the cross on the ground. It’s not a huge panorama, which I’d like to try someday, but that’s because the conditions weren’t good enough to see all that much of the Milky Way anyway. A good viewing night in the dark skies of Nevada would help a lot on that score. Maybe next year.

April 25, 2020 — Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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