Thanks to Stefanie Hamilton and the rest of the Jasper Park Lodge staff for putting me up for two weeks during year two of Dark Skies month here.
Over the last two years, Fairmont has shown tremendous faith and generosity in sponsoring both the Jasper Dark Sky Festival and myself as Jasper’s Sky Guy In Residence.
Tonight, I had the pleasure of working with about a dozen JPL staff members (in Jasper Dark Sky Preserve, “JPL” stands for Jasper Park Lodge – not the Jet Propulsion Lab, of NASA-fame) to walk them through the basics of using the Lodge’s large 12.5″ telescope, as well as show them around the skies in the world’s largest dark sky preserve.
Thanks to Sage (again, coolest name in Jasper) and all the other staff who gave the telescope a whirl, as well as Matt for sharing his astronomical knowledge (and super-powerful green laser pointer – holy lightsaber!)
For those interested in downloading some of the images of our stargazing session, here’re two pics of all of us and the Milky Way rising over the JPL canoe docks.
I’ve also included two shots I took afterwards, from outside our room and down on one of the sun docks down the hill from our home for the next week or so.
Telescope’s back in the main lobby – Thanks for a great night…Clear skies, guys!