2 minute read
Experience Jasper National Park
If dark starry night skies give you goose bumps, you’ve come to the right place!
Photo Courtesy of Jasper Planetarium
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The landscape within Jasper National Park is a vision during daylight, but it also has a night time magic very rare in the world these days. The park boasts one of the largest dark sky preserves in the world. You can see dreamy nightscapes of planets and constellations year-round, although the stars are brightest during the monthly phase of the new moon.
In March 2011 the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) officially designated Jasper National Park as a Dark Sky Preserve (DSP). A DSP is an area in which no artificial lighting is visible and active measures are in place to promote the reduction of light pollution, the protection of nocturnal habitat, and the visibility of the night skies.
While Jasper is nestled within soaring mountain ranges, it also has the largest clearings in the Rockies, ideal for dramatic open spaces for stargazing. This kind of wilderness astronomy in the Canadian Rockies is a pursuit gaining real traction with parents and grandparents, alike. They take advantage of the perfect conditions to share this amazing experience with their children and grandchildren. Families are replacing clumsy & expensive telescopes with iPads and GPS-based star-finders to browse their way around the vast sky.
Astronomy programs are offered daily at the Planetarium and Jasper’s Dark Sky Festival is a “must see”. Since inception, this festival has grown into one of North America’s largest annual celebrations of the night sky. Plan to return for the ultimate Jasper Dark Sky experience, from October 18-27, 2019 that includes:
• Guided virtual tour in climate-controlled dome theatre
• See the local aboriginal First Nations constellations
• Tour of the most powerful telescopes in the Rockies
• See recent 4K sky imagery with a new video telescope
• Learn how to photograph auroras and the Milky Way
• Guided tour deep space and Q&A with astronomy expert
What to Bring? (in addition to warm clothes) You’ll be simply amazed as to what you will be able to see with the naked eye, but if you have a Smart Phone or an iPad, load up a GPS-based star finder program from your App Store, and get familiar with it, before you leave home.
Your camera! Remember to take pictures of your experience and enter our reader contest! (see pg 58)
Image-stabilized binoculars feature optics that adjust many times a second to counteract your unsteady hands, effectively transforming such devices into small telescopes without the need to pack a tripod.
