rssHeading east out of Edmonton on the Yellowhead, my city-stressed grip on the steering wheel loosens as the vertical lines of refinery row give way to blue sky – broken only by an interminable horizon bathed in gold by the setting sun. My destination: Elk Island National Park, where the possibility of sighting a plains bison, or an endangered trumpeter swan floating on one of 250 lakes and ponds, has long made the park a popular weekend destination for local urbanites. But since its 100th birthday in 2006, the park’s boreal landscape of ragged sedgewood, bog and prairie is also luring another kind of visitor. And the swans and bison – and elk, deer and moose – that roam here are of secondary, if any, interest to these night owls, who are more intrigued by the celestial marvels draped across the preserve’s night skies.
That’s because on September 3, 2006, Elk Island was named a key area in one of only seven designated “dark sky preserves” in Canada – locations that still feature a pitch-black sky and are protected against light pollution in an increasingly light-polluted hemisphere. South of the 49th parallel, the light bulb is so prevalent that no sky east of the Mississippi is truly considered dark. But here at Elk Island, the universe is still an inky playground. Armed simply with a telescope and warm gloves, stargazers can launch nightly from Arcturus (the third- brightest star in the galaxy), then journey through time to revisit the Greek and First Nations legends scripted in the stars, while pondering multifaceted and fantastically coloured nebulae or the cratered surface of the moon in the hope of glimpsing a rare meteor strike.
This Indian summer evening, however, the park is a launch pad for its first annual “star party” – a gathering of 200 or so astronomy buffs celebrating the designation of Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve. Through a partnership between Parks Canada, Alberta Parks and Protected Areas and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 293 square kilometres – encompassing all of Elk Island Park and the adjoining Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area – are now protected. Which means no unnecessary lights, and whatever lights are necessary must be modified so they don’t spill into areas where they’re not required.
The atmosphere is that of a small-town fall fair. Sizzling bison burgers are snatched hot off a portable grill. Steaming cups of gourmet coffee help gird the milling crowd – a mix of families, seniors, retired academics, shutterbugs and political activists – against the wind. And as the sun dips toward Astotin Lake and the sky turns brilliant hues of orange and blue, we move into the interpretive centre’s theatre to hear Parks Canada’s Matt Davis explain why dark skies should matter to all of us.
“Parks have traditionally been concerned with protecting animals from extinction, by ensuring food sources and territory needs are sound and intact and undisturbed,” says Davis, rushing through his practised patter to get to his current passion: “But now we know that a dark sky is equally essential.” Over the millennia, he explains, plants and animals have evolved to function in either the full light of day or minimal sunlight reflected by the moon. But the incursion of man-made light in wilderness tracts is jeopardizing such adaptations. Prey animals freeze in human-lit areas, expecting their night-adapted camouflage to render them invisible; stalking by nocturnal predators is rendered futile as targets flee before a too-visible enemy. The survival of plants is similarly compromised, notes Davis. Exposure to anything more brilliant than a full moon interferes with the conversion of light into energy through photosynthesis, a process as essential to plant survival as eating and drinking is to humans.
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Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve represents an effort to arrest these and other negative effects of light pollution on the natural world. One of only two such parks in the province, it is the only one that is exclusively Alberta’s. (The other, the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, crosses far into Saskatchewan.) Though ironically, most parks in Canada need not do much to comply with dark-sky-preserve standards. The biggest obstacle to full compliance, one that some here discuss in heated tones, tends to be light pollution from outside a park’s boundaries. In this case: the city of Edmonton, particularly the intense light wasted by its refinery operations and billboards. “It’s still dark enough here that you can see the Milky Way and a lot of other astronomical phenomenon,” says Davis. “But the park is highly polluted by Fort Saskatchewan and Edmonton.” Hopefully, Edmonton’s participation in this spring’s “earth hour” is a step in the right direction.
It’s twilight when the lecture ends, and the stargazers gather outside the theatre to assemble and orient their telescopes with the aid of red-filtered flashlights (which help keep night vision keen). One stargazer’s instrument rests on a satellite-guided base. Adorned with glowing switches and an LED display that blinks as the device whirrs and groans, this marvel of optics and mechanics looks to have more in common with George Lucas’s R2-D2 robot than Galileo’s early telescopes.
Employing a smooth, patient voice refined through years of lectures, retired astrophysicist Dr. Douglas Hube exemplifies the charm of a stargazing party as he calibrates this $3,000 marvel, which happens to be his wife’s. She stands patiently nearby, bemused, as he fiddles with the electronic controls like one trying to cook a soufflé in a stranger’s kitchen. “Some people are interested in planets. Some just look at the sun. Others focus on fuzzy distant galaxies,” says Hube. He recalls a trip the couple took to witness the Leonid Meteor Shower from atop Australia’s Ayer’s Rock – “the lights streaming by so clearly as to seem almost within reach” – and it is clear that while both husband and wife are scientists, they still find romance in the stars. “That was a black, black, clear sky. We were just lying down on a knoll in the desert, watching the meteors stream by,” he recalls. “It was spectacular.”
Abruptly he holds out an arm, waves me into position behind the telescope’s eyepiece and gives a star-starved rube a tour of the just-visible lights now appearing in the velvet sky. Pointing to a “binary pair” of twinkling lights, he explains how the pinpricks once served as a basic eye exam for ancient Arab cultures: if you could see two stars, your vision was good; if you saw just one, your vision was poor.
By the 1930s, the constellations in our galaxy had all been identified and named. But for thousands of years, these same stars have captivated cultures around the world, and every one has its own stories about them. Constellations such as the Big Bear (or Big Dipper) have even inspired similar tales across civilizations. “Despite vast differences in geography, language and culture, bear stories explaining the Big Dipper – scientifically known as Ursa Major (Latin for ‘big bear’) – appear in ancient Greek, Celtic and First Nations myth,” Alberta provincial parks’ Cecilia Goncalves explains in a stage whisper as I wander through a huddle of listeners. Wearing a red headlamp and holding a glow-in-the-dark constellation chart, Goncalves is keeping younger stargazers enthralled with an aboriginal story of how the great bear lost its tail thanks to a tricky fox. The Greek version of this same story has Zeus protecting his lover and illegitimate son from his wife by turning them into bears and tossing them into the sky. In Celtic legends, the Big Dipper is associated with King Arthur – whose name is derived from the Celtic word for “bear” – and the constellation’s pattern is linked to Arthur’s chariot.
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But the heavens are not inhabited solely by the ancient characters of legend. For many amateur astronomers, the possibility that they might one day discover and name a new astral body is motivation enough to gather on nights like this. At a Saskatchewan star party at the Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve in 2001, amateur astronomer Vance Petriew chanced upon a faint and previously unseen white blob while searching through his telescope for the popular Crab Nebula. The blob didn’t appear on any star charts, and, after further investigation by professional astronomers, it was confirmed that he had discovered an unknown comet. Only the eighth Canadian in the history of astronomy to discover a new comet, Petriew soon had the honour of naming it – giving his family a permanent memorial in the night sky.
The chance of making such a discovery is less than that of being hit by lightning or winning the lottery twice. But it still exists, even when studying well-known celestial bodies and phenomena. “There are just so many details on the moon, so many distant planets, so many galaxies – there is no end of things to look at or new discoveries to make,” says Hube. “And even if most stars have been observed by professionals, and anyone with an Internet connection can see photos of these unearthly gems, to see them with one’s own eye . . . well, it’s like the difference between seeing a photo-essay about Africa’s Serengeti and being there.”
No wonder Canadians recently voted their prairie skies one of the country’s seven greatest natural wonders, though such praise was meant for sunrise and sunset spectacles. To achieve a comparable level of fame for the prairies’ night skies, those who fight the growing threat of light pollution will have to overcome a basic, primal obstacle, in that “people are still scared of the dark,” says Sherrilyn Jahrig, Edmonton’s RASC Dark Sky Preserve coordinator. “That fear drives a lot of bad lighting decisions.”
Ultimately, Jahrig and other dark-sky advocates dream of following the model of Tucson, Arizona, a city approximately the same size as Edmonton that has reduced its light pollution so dramatically that the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye from the downtown core. For Jahrig, accomplishing the same in Edmonton would not only protect the Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve, it would bring back a simple yet special experience for future generations to enjoy.
“Some of my very best memories are from my grandparents’ farm. On a moonless night, it was like the stars came right down to you,” she says, smiling wistfully. “So many kids today will never have an experience like that.”
Milky Way-ins
Running the stargazing gamut, from one-night affairs with a few dozen attendees to week-long galas that draw thousands of astronomy enthusiasts, Alberta’s star parties are more popular than ever. Activities range from -lectures by prominent astronomy figures to exhibitions of the latest stargazing tools. As for star-party etiquette:
- Arrive well before dark. It takes up to 30 minutes for the eyes to fully adjust to complete darkness, and just one set of after-dusk headlights can set back this acclimatization.
- In the interest of minimizing light pollution, flashlights are usually prohibited; small, red lights, which don’t interfere as much with dark-adaptation, are used instead.
- Bring warm clothes, water and bug repellant, as most parties last well into the night.
To learn more about astronomy and related sciences visit Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Edmonton Chapter (http://www.edmontonrasc.com) or the Calgary Chapter (http://calgary.rasc.ca/)
