It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

Ahoy there, I'm Logan Jaffe, Curious City's multimedia producer.

And I'm Jesse Dukes, audio producer. We're answering a question from Paula

de Los Angeles, who lives in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. Paula is from a smallish town in

Connecticut, went to college in another small town in California, and then moved to Chicago.

So this is the first time where I'm living in a big city,

where there are a lot of tall buildings, nightlights, and everything.

And she noticed something really big was missing.

I guess it's the first time where I've looked up,

and it's just not that easy to see the stars, you know.

Maybe you don't know.

If you're not like Paula, if you didn't grow up in a smaller city or rural town, maybe you have no idea what you're missing.

You see, Chicago has some of the worst light pollution in the country.

Glare from streetlights and the sprawl obscures the stars. Even in far-out suburbs,

you can only see just a handful of stars, if you're lucky. So we asked astronomers and stargazers

where Chicago's good stargazing spots are, you know, aside from the Adler Planetarium. And

they all said the same thing.

Nowhere.

Womp.

Except?

You can see stars if you're in this one huge, gaping dark spot.

I had no idea that it would be in the middle of Lake Michigan.

...