Download this ebook as PDF - E-Book Library

Astro Tourism
Stars Above, Earth Below:
Astronomy
TYLER NORDGREN
As a professional astronomer,
my luggage is covered with buttons
and stickers from places
familiar to astronomy enthusiasts, sites such
as Palomar, Mauna Kea, Siding Spring, and
Arecibo. But for the past fi ve years my astronomical
career has taken me to new destinations
with names like Yellowstone, Yosemite,
Grand Canyon, and Glacier. As artifi cial lights
creep toward our observatories and make it
increasingly diffi cult to see stars from urban
areas, the national parks that protect our last
unspoiled wilderness by day are also protecting
our sky at night.
Tonight I’ve driven to Great Basin National
Park in central Nevada. Created around
Lehman Caves National Monument in 1986,
Great Basin is one of the newest national
parks, and its isolation invokes a feeling of
having stepped back into yesteryear. Instead
of long lines of cars at multiple entry stations,
there’s a single lonely road leading up into
mountains that are dotted with aspen trees and
that still carry patches of snow in July.
This feeling of having stepped back in
time continues after nightfall. As far as my
eyes can see to the distant mountains, there’s
not a single city light dome visible at all, and
only a dozen or so house lights shine faintly
in the distance. I can’t remember when I last
saw a sky this dark. Even with the lights of my
GPS and dashboard streaming into my eyes,
I can still discern detail in the Milky Way that
normally takes forever to tease out of the sky’s
background glow. In Great Basin National
Park, like the mountains, caves, aspens, and
glacier that attract visitors by day, the galactic
plane overhead is preserved the way everyone
used to see it.
26 May 2012 sky & telescope
Star Parties and Festivals
Current estimates suggest that 60% of Americans
no longer live where the Milky Way is
even faintly visible, and worldwide roughly
half of the children born in 2012 are expected
to never see it at all. U.S. national parks are
among the greatest locations guaranteed to
reveal the splendor of the night sky. The public
has noticed this. Surveys reveal that a starfi
lled sky is now as integral to a visitor’s park
experience as seeing waterfalls and wildlife. To
help protect this celestial resource for future
generations, a small team of park rangers and
professional astronomers are working together
to measure and monitor the night sky of the
parks, looking to quantify its darkness and the
major sources of light pollution from inside and
outside the park (see sidebar, page 32).
The National Park Service Night Sky Team
not only travels the country monitoring light
pollution, it also helps coordinate astronomy
volunteers for those parks looking to put on
evening astronomy programs. These programs
take the form of everything from hikes under
a full Moon to telescope tours around the time
of new Moon, all of which are among the most
popular evening programs that parks off er. In
smaller parks, these night-sky programs may
stem from the astronomy passion of a single
ranger or volunteer, while at larger parks, local
astronomy clubs work with rangers to regularly
operate multiple telescopes for the public’s
enjoyment.
In Yosemite National Park, California
astronomy clubs take turns setting up telescopes
every summer weekend at Glacier
Point, a spectacular vista that overlooks Half
The Milky Way and Scorpius rise above Zion
Canyon, the centerpiece of Zion National Park
in southern Utah. PHOTO BY WALLY PACHOLKA
in