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Space Topics: Planetary Analogs

Stars Above, Earth Below

Astronomy and Space Exploration in America's National Parks


Yosemite National park , California

The Milky Way over Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park
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The Milky Way over Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park
The Milky Way from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. Moonlight still illuminates Half Dome and the high Sierras beyond. While the colors of the Milky Way are only visible in long exposure photographs, most of the detail is visible to the naked eye if you take the time to look. Credit: Tyler Nordgren

by Tyler Nordgren
June 8, 2009

Come See the Milky Way from Glacier Point

For those of you who were following along on my year-long journey through America’s National Parks, you may have wondered what happened after August of last year. “What happened” is my sabbatical ended and I returned to teaching. I put by hiking boots back in the closet, put away my walking stick, hung up my hat, stopped looking to the horizon and instead got back into the classroom surrounded by four walls and filled with students eager to learn physics.

While I was back to living under light-polluted skies, I could look back on my year of traveling through 18 national parks and monuments, giving talks on astronomy and planetary sciences to crowds in campgrounds, visitor center, and park lodges, and take pleasure in the fact there was still one more to go. Last week I spoke up at the LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite Valley, in Yosemite National Park. Because Yosemite is so popular a destination in summers, all lodging, lectures, and activities are usually booked a year ahead of time. So during all of my planning last year, I knew this would be the last park visit.

My talk at the LeConte Lodge
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My talk at the LeConte Lodge
The title of my talk (and this blog) is visible through the doorway of the LeConte Memorial Lodge within Yosemite National Park. Credit: Tyler Nordgren
The LeConte Memorial Lodge, named for Joseph LeConte, one of the founding members of the Sierra Club who worked with naturalist John Muir on (among other things) promoting the glacial origin of Yosemite Valley, is a today an information center in Yosemite Valley dedicated to public education about the need to protect places like Yosemite. As such, this was the perfect venue for a talk about the importance of protecting our world’s night skies, not just for the enjoyment of future generations, but for the future of astronomy and space exploration.

Spend a year visiting America’s national parks and then spend some time traveling through Europe and other industrialized nations. Our park system is unique in both magnitude and conception. They were created at just the right time in the mid 1800’s to protect many spectacular landscapes in the western half of the continent from the onrushing expansion of westward migration and later industrialization. President Theodore Roosevelt played an enormous role in preserving many of the most famous and popular parks throughout the west (like Grand Canyon) and in Yosemite there is a plaque at the west end of the valley commemorating his meeting and agreement with John Muir on the need to preserve Yosemite for the enjoyment of future generations.

Today, over 10 million people a year, from all over the world, flock to our parks and through educational programs (led by ranger naturalists, or viewed individually through interpretive plaques, and cell phone and podcast tours) learn about the geology, history, biology and ecology of the natural world that our parks protect.

So what does this have to do with astronomy and space exploration? For those who have been following along on earlier posts, one unintended consequence of the national parks is that while they protected the natural landscape from the rise of development and industrialization over the last 150 years, they also protected the night sky from the light pollution they brought in their wake. Picture the star-filled night sky (with planets, nebulae, clusters, and Milky Way) as a natural landscape, and you quickly realize that in the 21st century it is as rare for a child to enjoy this wilderness on a nightly basis, as it is for them to see grizzly bears, glaciers, geysers and canyons from their front door step.

For those of us who are astronomers, who are engaged in exploring the solar system and the universe beyond, either by telescope, robotic spacecraft, or in person, we can do none of these things without the support of the public who we sincerely believe will benefit from our exploration. In the final chapter of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos he says that when the mob came to burn the Library of Alexandria, the greatest single collection of human knowledge for most recorded history, there was no one to stop them because none of those who had ever contributed to the knowledge gathered at the library had ever used that knowledge for the education and betterment of the people.

This year we celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo pointing his telescope at the heavens. The irony is that over those 400 years we have gone from a time when our view of the heavens was available to everyone, but the technological means of exploring it was available to only a few, to a time when the technical means are now available to everyone (through amateur telescopes and on-line space imagery) yet the direct personal view of the heavens is now available to almost none.

The Milky Way over Yosemite National Park
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The Milky Way over Yosemite National Park
The Milky Way from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park as measured by the National Park Service Night Sky Team. Colors represent the sky brightness in units of magnitudes per square arcseconds and increase through the spectrum from black to white. To the south is the light dome of Fresno, while to the west is the combined light of Sacramento and San Francisco. Credit: Dan Duriscoe and Chad Moore, National Park Service.
The last thirty years have been a Golden Age for astronomy, planetary science, and their educational outreach to the public. But imagine trying to reach out to the public about the power and beauty of the natural world if it was no longer possible for everyday people to walk through a forest, hike through a mountain valley, explore a canyon, or see the beauty of a deer or bear first hand? As beautiful as a picture may be, anyone who has ever been to a park in person knows a photo is no substitute for seeing it first-hand. This is the danger we face in astronomy. As beautiful as Cassini’s images have been, watch the look in a child’s eye when they see Saturn through a telescope for the first time and you can be assured that that is someone who will grow up to understand on a personal level why we hope to send spacecraft back there to explore Titan and Enceladus someday.

This what I saw in every park I visited over the last 24 months and why the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is working this year to strengthen astronomical outreach to the public in the parks. This September the ASP at their 120th annual meeting, “Science Education and Outreach: Forging a Path to the Future,” they will host a session on science in the parks. I’ll be there with other members of the National Park Service’s Night Sky Team talking about improving these connections.

Where to from here? In September, Acadia National Park, the town of Bar Harbor, Maine, and the Island Astronomy Institute will be hosting the first annual Night Sky Festival to celebrate their beautifully dark skies; I’ll be hosting a public workshop on the night sky and astrophotography. In the spring, my book on astronomy and planetary science in the parks, Star Above, Earth Below, is expected to be out in bookstores. I’ll be back at the LeConte Lodge, Thursday June 17th 2010 after which I will be traveling once more through the parks, giving talks about the sky I love.