Jasper’s dark sky was the star of the show last weekend.
People from far and wide travelled to the park just for it—well, it and Col. Chris Hadfield, anyway, and on Friday night, visitors and locals alike were rewarded with a spectacularly clear night, providing the perfect opportunity to look up and appreciate the hundreds of thousands of stars sprinkled across our universe.
Many enjoyed the sky from Annette Lake, where the Beyond the Stars event was taking place, allowing professional and amateur astronomers the opportunity to look through telescopes, learn about dark sky photography and to listen to Aboriginal legends and songs about the sky.
While Saturday’s weather wasn’t quite so favourable, with snow falling for a large portion of the afternoon and evening, it held out long enough for kids to make and launch bottle rockets and to see model rockets fly high into the sky and parachute back down to Earth.
That evening, as snow fell outside, nearly 1,000 people piled into a huge circus tent on Centennial Field to take in lectures and musical performances by both Hadfield and former Daily Planet host Jay Ingram.
The weekend of dark sky events wrapped up at Pyramid Island with a starlight adventure—minus the stars. But, in place of a clear night sky was a light display on the trees that encircled the Island.
Jasper’s Dark Sky Festival was launched in 2011, after Jasper National Park was designated a Dark Sky Preserve by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Nicole Veerman
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