Under a brilliant night sky, the twisted branches of Joshua trees reach for the stars. Boasting some of the darkest nights in Southern California, Joshua Tree National Park offers many visitors the chance to admire a star-filled sky. Winter nights provide more time to stargaze, and constellations like Orion, Sirius, Gemini and Taurus are prominent. Whether from one of the campgrounds, while backpacking the vast wilderness or from your car along a roadside pullout– look to the stars, and you’ll see how Joshua Tree earned International Dark Sky Park distinction. Wishing you many starry night skies this coming year and a wonderful New Year’s Eve. This community continues to be such a beautiful bright light for us. Photo by Beihua Steven Guo (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Sometimes, going to national parks can feel like time travel. Exploring Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado gives you a chance to experience the preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people. Established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park contains 5,000+ known archeological sites – from the cliff dwellings to mesa top sites of pithouses, pueblos, masonry towers and farming structures. A visit here is like going 1,000 years into the past. Photo by Scott Reynolds (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Happy Birthday, Mount Rainier National Park! Home to the tallest mountain in Washington, the beauty of this park spikes the adrenaline and astounds us even on the darkest nights. As a spiritual and cultural icon of the Pacific Northwest, Mount Rainier is a place of beauty, solace, challenge, and hope for the future. Here’s to another year of cherishing this remarkable place. Photo courtesy Christine Kenyon.

Public lands are some of the best places to enjoy the dark skies. Atop the Cumberland Plateau in Kentucky and Tennessee, Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area offers presentations that guide visitors through the night sky, and telescope viewing of stars, planets, nebulae, galaxies and the International Space Station. It’s an out of this world experience! Photo by Josh Bandy, National Park Service.

Time seems to stand still at Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Clear, dark nights allow vivid starlight to shine down on the rugged landscape. Reaching slowly towards the sky, the saguaro cactus usually doesn’t develop branches until it’s 50 years old and isn’t considered an adult until it’s 125. Some may live to be 200 years old and reach a height of 50 feet. A return to the park decades after a visit will find things mostly unchanged. The desert isn’t trying to impress you. It just does. Photo by John Vermette (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Photographer Jose Torres won the Night Sky category of the Share The Experience contest with this incredible shot of the Milky Way at Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida. Located almost 70 miles west of Key West, the 100-square mile park is mostly open water with seven small islands. Accessible only by boat or seaplane, the park is known for the magnificent Fort Jefferson, picturesque blue waters, great snorkeling and amazing night skies. Photo by Jose Torres (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Spreading across Long Valley in California, the Volcanic Tablelands are a vast and unique landscape formed 700,000 years ago. Small canyons and bluffs dot the mostly flat area, offering amazing night sky views. Carved into the gray, red and pink rocks are extraordinary petroglyphs, mysterious symbols created by Native Americans centuries ago. Archaeologists can only speculate on their meaning. Photo of Bureau of Land Management site by Brandon Yoshizawa (www.sharetheexperience.org).

From its rocky coastline to the top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park in Maine will take your breath away. Day or night, the sights and sounds of the park give visitors memories they’ll cherish for a lifetime. Famous for sunrise, the park is also a terrific place to enjoy the night sky. Photo of the Milky Way from Little Hunters Beach by Joshua Snow (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Located on the outer portion of Massachusetts’s Cape, Cape Cod National Seashore’s 44,600 acres encompass a rich mosaic of marine, estuarine, fresh water and terrestrial ecosystems. Here you can explore pristine sandy beach, lighthouses, cultural landscapes and wild cranberry bogs. Photo of the Milky Way rising over a salt pond by Jatin Thakkar (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Nothing compares to staying up all night, watching the stars twinkle overhead. Derek Culver captured this amazing pic at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. The lights on the mountain: A few climbers getting an early start to the summit under the Milky Way.  Photo courtesy of Derek Culver.