Preserving the night sky (Page 3 of 3)
With light pollution from cities threatening our view of the Milky Way, Jasper National Park is helping lead the way in preserving darkness.
By Peter McMahon with photography by Yuichi Takasaka
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| Devoid of the relentless whoosh of cars or contrails from airplanes, the sky out here lets you travel to distant places and times. (Photo: Yuichi Takasaka) |
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| I can’t help fantasizing about eco-vigilantes taking out the last of the town’s offending street lamps with a few well-placed BBs. |
Devoid of the relentless whoosh of cars or even contrails
from airplanes, the sky out here lets you travel not only to
distant places but also to a distant
time — before suburban
street lamps, stadium floodlights and snazzy condos with
vanity illumination. Here in Night Sky National Park,
exiled stars are restored to their former glory. Two hundred
years ago, David Thompson became the first European to
cross the Rockies through Athabasca Pass, making maps of
these mountains. “After a weary day’s march we sat by a log
fire … with thousands of sparkling stars passing before
us,” he later wrote. “We could not help enquiring [as to]
who lived in those bright mansions.” I get the sense that
Thompson would share my pride in knowing that the
treasures above this region are being preserved for the
Wii generation to discover.
My musing is interrupted by a shooting star. The tiny pebble
from space pushes the air around it at thousands of
kilometres per hour, superheating the stone and sending it
flickering gloriously to its death high in the atmosphere. The
Ojibway call such cosmic gatecrashers “wolverines of the sky.”
Back in town the following afternoon, I do a little more
stargazing — this time safely observing our sunburninducing
local star by projecting it from a telescope eyepiece
onto a piece of white paper at the info centre, where thousands
of visitors congregate each day in the summer. Park interpreter
Brian Catto is regaling passersby with fun facts about sunspots.
They’re cooler areas of magnetic disturbance on the solar
surface, he explains, only 4,000°C. “Think of them as planetsized
holes where the sun farts out explosive gas,” I add to a
pair of grinning eight-year-olds and their parents.
Catto knows that for Jasper to develop a marketable
braintrust of astronomy guides, he has to start with himself,
taking his general knowledge to the next level. He
has pored through books and websites and begun
using a GPS-based star finder and a large telescope
to get to know the stars for curious audiences.
“Once we got a basic astronomy talk started at
the Whistlers campground amphitheatre, I saw
more people enjoying the programs during the
shoulder season than I’d seen in quite a while,” he
says. “It really struck a chord.”
Jasper’s marketing, product development,
visitor experience and interpretive teams have
begun to work with the local tourism authority
and the municipality to create one of the most
detailed proposals yet for dark-sky preserve
status. Product development officer Rogier Gruys
spent weeks surveying stargazing sites, such as the
Marmot Meadows clearing that’s within walking
distance of the Whistlers campground, using
light-gathering meters to take darkness measurements
over multiple dates. In an audit of the
entire 11,000-square-kilometre park, staff marked
the type and locations of current lighting, noting
where fixtures need to be changed or put on
timers and motion sensors. They met with
Canadian National Railway officials to discuss the
lights at the townsite’s rail yard and are working
with resorts and other commercial partners to
reduce their lighting footprint.
“My gosh, all I do is look at people’s lights now,” says
Keyes-Brady. “We want to become a place where visitors see
the dark in a whole new light. Part of the park experience
for people out here is the anticipation that you might see an
elk or hear a wolf or spot a meteor shooting through the sky.
At any given moment, something amazing could happen.”
March 2011. I’m back in Alberta to give a talk at Elk
Island’s star party but the mountains are still in my thoughts.
By the time this magazine is published, the RASC will have
officially approved Jasper National Park’s proposal to become
the world’s largest dark-sky preserve, with Grasslands
National Park becoming the second biggest. Jasper will also
be one of the world’s darkest astronomy parks.
Driving west to Edmonton after the star party, my car
cruises through a forest of industrial parks. In the wee hours
of the morning, I steer leisurely through the cathedral
of office towers presiding over the downtown core. Not a
single star shines overhead. The trembling aspen beckon,
tempting me to keep driving, past the city, to Jasper.
As the highway through suburbia makes its way back to
nature, the banished stars return. The mountains of the
Milky Way appear, and the gates of Night Sky National Park
swing open for new visitors.
Science writer Peter McMahon (www.wildernessastronomy.com),
of Port Hope, Ont., has written and produced for CTV, the
Discovery Channel and the Toronto Star. His second book, a
children’s guide to space tourism, will be published in the fall by
Kids Can Press. Astronomy photographer Yuichi Takasaka lives
in Lumby, B.C.
To see updated stargazing conditions in the Jasper dark sky preserve, visit: www.jasperdarksky.org
Related content and resources:
April 2011 issue
