In addition to the fabulous features of the Bruce Peninsula and surrounding area chronicled in Sky News Magazine, I’d like to share with you an aspect of the region’s dark-sky success story we didn’t have space to get into in the print edition.
A magic bullet for dark sky success
More and more across Canada and North America, astronomy club members are being joined coast to coast by families, environmentalists, business leaders, marketing experts and Continue reading
If someone had asked me last week where you should go if you hate seeing things like stars, planets, nebulas and galaxies, I would have told them to head to BC’s Kootenay mountains.
But after years of trying to go stargazing from Canada’s largest, least crowded, least stinky hot spring, the clouds parted for more than a few hours and we FINALLY Continue reading
I was feeling a bit melancholy at the end of this month – and not due to the end of the warm season here in Ontario, or the ominous approach of Halloween (which I actually really love.) I was mourning the end of what felt like one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments – Like a kid at the end of a great season of summer camp, not knowing if they’ll ever be back:
(Above: The river widens at midnight below Jasper’s Athebasca Falls (click for full-res to see the extent of stars. Image: Peter McMahon) Continue reading
Brian Catto, if you are reading this…See! You can get this picture!!
(Brian is Jasper National Park’s head interpreter and told me – rightly so – I was insane…well, perhaps overly-optimistic, to think I could get a shot of the water down in this canyon AND the stars above.
Turns out all I needed was the most useless lens on Earth for doing anything but shooting stars above canyons ; )
This shot of the stars & Moon over Maligne Canyon was taken just a few days before Jasper National Park and Dark Sky Preserve’s inaugural dark sky festival…
Taken with a 6.5mm fisheye lens, with a 180 Continue reading
Special thanks to Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge (featured here in this Oct 7 image at right, er left, if you’re reading this on Facebook) for putting me up for the month of October while Tourism Jasper brings me in to serve as Jasper National Park and Dark Sky Preserve’s “Sky Guy in-residence”.
The newly-designated astronomy park – the world’s largest, by a factor of ten – officially opened October 1 with a gala evening on Maligne Lake. Jasper’s mayor Richard Ireland, park superintendent Greg Fenton, the president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and local MPs gave in-person and remotely-delivered speeches of congratulations. Continue reading
Wrapping up our rattlesnake tour of Canadian stargazing destinations, we stopped by Bruce Peninsula National Park/Fathom Five National Marine Reserve and Dark Sky Preserve.
(Web resources at bottom of post)
Though it has fewer venomous snakes than Grasslands dark sky preserve, the ones here near the harbour town of Tobermory are a protected species (you can actually get in trouble with authorities for harming them.) Thankfully, no snakes emerged and our 20-lb mascot Winston was snuggled up in the motel far from any dangerous tall grass.
Meanwhile, local astronomy guru Rod Steinacher was kind enough to spend the night showing me around the local stargazing haunts and he did NOT disappoint! Continue reading
It’s official, bookings to have me do interactive presentations, guided GPS/iPad/image stabilized binoc/telescope tours of the night sky in Jasper are filling up as I get set to head west to the world’s largest dark sky preserve.
Last year, I helped Jasper National Park become the planet’s biggest astronomy park. Now, this year, I’m coming back to camp out with patrons in the park, at hotels, resorts, and a slew of special locations throughout the area.
I’ll also be giving a presentation on dark sky preserves and on the unique position Jasper is in at the grand opening of the dark sky preserve and at Jasper’s fall dark sky festival.
Check out my take in the video at top as to what’s making astronomy so much more accessible these days to families on an adventure in the great outdoors AND above (in Generation 1/2 Night Vision) for a live tour of the night sky…
On the way back from the Canadian Science Writers’ Association conference just over a month ago, we stopped by the town of Val Marie, SK (pop. 136) on the edge of Grasslands National Park.
The lone (and lone) prairie habitat in the Parks Canada system recently doubled its yearly visitors from 5,000 to almost 10,000.
In comparison, 11 km long Point Pelee in Ontario gets 250,000…Banff gets more than 3 million.
How did Grasslands do it? The chief new attractions have been the rare, re-introduced Black-footed ferret and an RASC dark sky preserve designation.
With 11,000+ square/km Jasper becoming the largest dark sky preserve on Earth (as of 2011) Grasslands is still comfortably the second largest in area (about 1,000 sq km) and the one with the best views in Canada down to the horizon.
We stayed in authentic tipis at The Crossing – on the edge of the park and close to one of its prime stargazing sites. For more, check out my dark sky column on Grasslands in the November 100th issue of Sky News magazine…
Resources (Web links from Sky News magazine column)
Grasslands stargazing locations (you’ll also find the dates for current star parties here)
Prairie Wind & Silver Sage: Friends of Grasslands National Park
Grasslands/Val Marie accommodations and camping locations
A month or so ago, I was in Cypress Hills Interprovincial park on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border to research an upcoming column for Sky News magazine.
Though the observatory officially opens at the end of August and the column likely won’t be out until 2012, I thought it would be nifty to share some of the construction photos here.
After 400 km of driving, rain, sleet, and the stale-burnt reek of the drifting smoke from the British Columbia wildfires, I set-up my tent (thanks again MEC) in the rain at the massive but friendily-staffed Tunnel Mountain village 1 – the first half of Canada’s largest campground.
After heading into Banff for asprin and Tums (if you don’t know why, you haven’t O.D.ed on carbs after age 30), I returned from the glare of the bright lights in town to a COMPLETELY clear sky!
What was even cooler was the eerie pillars of light peeking through the trees from the glow of the Moon (and Jupiter) with what managed to poke through of the Milky Way floating overhead.
Fingers-crossed for this clear streak to continue: Today, I had a Parks Canada staff training group of about a dozen looking at sunspots via projection from a portable 3.5 inch short tube reflector.
Tomorrow night, I do my wilderness astronomy talk at one of the nation’s most prominent amphitheatres.
I hope I do the wolf-howl interpreter proud that got me interested in the natural world at an outdoor theatre just like this more than 25 years ago.
Wilderness Astronomy 