While visiting Jasper last month, two-year-old Juno looked up at the sky and saw something she had only ever read about in books.
For the first time in her life, she saw the stars.
The realization was one that caught her dad off guard. But, the truth is, the absence of stars is a common reality for people who grow up in cities, where light pollution washes away the opportunity to see the hundreds of trillions of celestial bodies stationed right above our heads.
In fact, according to astrophysicist Rob Thacker, with 鈥渢wo thirds of the world鈥檚 population in cities, that鈥檚 almost four billion people who don鈥檛 really know what the night sky looks like.鈥�
But fortunately, city folks鈥攁t least the ones in Edmonton, anyway鈥攄on鈥檛 have to travel far to find the stars. They can just run off to places like Jasper, where the nights are dark and the stars are bright.
In 2011, in recognition of our perfect starry nights, Jasper National Park was named a Dark Sky Preserve by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
A Dark Sky Preserve is an area where no artificial lighting is visible and active measures are in place to promote the reduction of light pollution and to educate the public about its importance.
Jasper quite easily fits into these provisions, as most of the park is uninhabited, with only a few outlying accommodations outside of the townsite; so all it takes is a quick drive down the highway or a jaunt into the wilderness to find complete and utter darkness.
And even within the townsite, a special effort is made to use dark sky friendly lighting, allowing stargazers to see the big dipper above Pyramid Mountain on any clear night.
Since Jasper received its designation four years ago, the community has celebrated the Jasper Dark Sky Festival each October, welcoming people from around the region and the world to join in our astronomical wonder, and to quite possibly catch their first glimpse of the stars鈥攐r at the very least of the Milky Way.
This year鈥檚 festival runs from Oct. 17鈥�26. We hope all our readers will be here to look up and share in the magic of Jasper鈥檚 dark skies.
