Telescopes were great in the 1970s - there were stars out there. Nowadays in the urban night sky there might be like two or three. It would be worth a trip to the middle of nowhere just to see stars again.
we took out oldest camping (Paul B Johnson state Park) when he was 3 or 4 and the sky that night was crystal clear and saw a bazillion stars (and two shooting stars). hadn't seen a clear night like that since katrina
had tried to find a similar experience for my youngest - we'd camped maybe 5-6 times and every time the sky was either overcast or the moon was just way too bright
but finally this past Thanksgiving we went to a hipcamp on the northshore and the sky was very clear and he finally got to see a bazillion stars (no shooting stars though)
and just now I remembered an exhibit at natural history museum at Smithsonian about the night sky and the effects of so much night lights (and models for how to mitigate)
good exhibit