A Brief Word on Night Skies

Stars over the Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon National Park.

NPS Photo by Dan Pawlak

On June 9, 2022, members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) SpaceX Crew-2 mission visited National Park Service Headquarters in Washington D.C. for a celebration of science, astronomy, art and exploration.

SpaceX Crew-2 returned to earth last November after a record-setting six months at the International Space Station. During their visit, the crew met with park leadership and employees to learn about the National Park Service’s efforts to protect and preserve our dark skies.

The following is the introductory speech given by Grand Canyon National Park Ranger Rader Lane to SpaceX Crew-2, National Park Service leadership, and Department employees in the North Penthouse of the Department of the Interior building. Read the full story here.

A Brief Word on Night Skies

Rader Lane - Grand Canyon National Park - June 9, 2022

Pictographs and petroglyphs in the southwest speak to our deep connection with sky-watching. The Supernova Pictograph at Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

NPS Photo

When we survey the national parks like the Grand Canyon and the regional parks surrounding, and we find ancient structures that align to true north, or notches in adobe walls through which light passes to anticipate the solstices, or “Sun Dagger Petroglyphs” that confirm the advent of the solstices through striking displays of light and shadow; when we find pictographs and petroglyphs that may commemorate awesome celestial events like supernovae, solar eclipses, comets, and meteor showers, or rock ceilings of painted stars that we are told hold strong the weight of their alcoves as the stars do the celestial sphere; when we discover stories of the constellations shared by contemporary tribes—stories which rival the depth and beauty of the classical Greek canon—we realize that the night skies have been part of the human story since time immemorial. We realize that to know a place is to know how its indigenous communities use the landscape as a palette to understand the workings of the Sun, Moon, and stars, and how the night skies, in turn, reflect the landscape and peoples. We place our local heritage in the stars—the plants and the animals, our parables of morality and warning, our gods and ancestors. It is as important to our concept of place to study what is written in the regional sky as it is to study its geology and ecology.

Astronomer George Ritchey proposed to build the world's largest telescope on the rim of the Grand Canyon in the 1920s. A drawing of the telescope was superimposed onto a photo of the Grand Canyon and published in a French magazine in 1928.

When we investigate the history of the United States, we find our advancements in astronomy, science, art, and exploration are inextricably linked with our public lands. In 1928, the world’s largest telescope was nearly built on the edge of Grand Canyon National Park. Astronomer George Ritchey proposed what was being referred to by New York Times columnists as the “desert watchtower.” He thought no other place but the Grand Canyon could match in nature the profundity found in the pursuit of astronomy. Edwin Hubble, mere weeks before he would publish his famous paper that would fundamentally change our understanding of the universe—and earn him the namesake for the Hubble Telescope, an instrument which some of our astronauts here today may or may not be familiar with—temporarily dropped his research to visit Grand Canyon to witness its dark skies firsthand. And though the telescope was never built due to administrative reasons, some historians think architect Mary Colter got the idea, or at least the name, for the now famous Desert View Watchtower from the articles written about this proposed telescope on the Rim of Creation.

In 1964, the Apollo Astronauts came to the Grand Canyon to study geology so that they could apply the lessons to their explorations of the lunar surface. Here, Neil Armstrong sits along the South Kaibab Trail on his way down to Phantom Ranch.

In 1964, the Apollo astronauts visited the Grand Canyon to hike to the bottom, through every layer of ancient stone, to study its geology so that they could apply these lessons to their explorations of the lunar surface. Imagine what Neil Armstrong must have been thinking, staring out at one of Earth’s natural wonders, a few years before he would be the first to step foot onto another world. Perhaps he was imbued with the spirit of naturalist John Muir, who said of the Grand Canyon, “The view down the gulf of color and over the rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads us to think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.”

The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness--the state of light pollution in the United States. The white areas are the worst light-polluted areas, followed by red, yellow, green, blue, and grey. Black areas represent sanctuaries of natural darkness.

Fabio Falchi et al - Science Advances 2016

When we ponder today’s society, and we realize that over 80% of people living in the United States can no longer see the Milky Way from their homes due to light pollution, we understand all too well that national parks represent the last remaining sanctuaries of pristine natural darkness. We can compare that sad statistic to the fact that on a moonless summer night at the Grand Canyon and other parks out west, the center of the Milky Way galaxy, throbbing with light within Sagittarius, is bright enough to cast your shadow.

The Grand Canyon Star Party is just one example of the many night sky festivals held across the National Park Service.

NPS Photo

To protect this experience, the National Park Service partners with NASA and others to bring both science and wonder into the hearts and minds of our visitors. We host night sky festivals in parks across the country—the Grand Canyon Star Party, for example, had an attendance of 12,544 visitors in 2019 alone. We had 81,095 visitor contacts—that’s eyeballs to eyepieces. We welcomed 4,370 visitors to our theater presentations. At this year’s event, representatives from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as well as NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory will present talks about their work to several hundred visitors per night.

The night sky transcends both art and science. Astronomer in Residence Tyler Nordgren created this graphic during his stay at the Grand Canyon. The images are based on photographs he took onsite.

Tyler Nordgren

Grand Canyon National Park and its non-profit partner the Grand Canyon Conservancy host the Astronomer in Residence Program where professional and amateur astronomers, writers, visual and performing artists, (astronauts), of all kinds are invited to live at the park for a time, focusing their disciplines through the multi-faceted values of one of the most pristine night skies in the United States.

Star talks in our national parks are undoubtedly the most popular formal programs offered by Interpretive rangers.

Photo by Austin Mann

Interpretive rangers across the country provide constellation talks, telescope viewing, Full Moon walks; we include visitors in the conversation through cutting-edge Audience-Centered-Experiences (ACE); parks partner with and provide forums for our indigenous communities to share regional stories of the skies; and we create media in the digital realm throughout the year to spread the word about the threats of light pollution, the values of pristine natural darkness, and the importance of science literacy.

Grand Canyon became an International Dark Sky Park in 2019, part of a growing list of dozens of national parks and other public lands that have achieved this certification. The park inventoried an unprecedented 5094 lights and have retrofitted most of them to be night-sky-friendly. With that certification, one of the crown-jewel parks has become undoubtedly one of the largest, most complex International Dark Sky Parks in the world. Consequently, one of the most visited national parks is also one of the darkest--it’s our national parks that now serve as worldwide hubs for visitors to experience not only the aesthetics of our vanishing night skies, but the subtle emotions we have lost in society by not being able to commune with the stars on a nightly basis, emotions that our ancestors knew well, emotions that today’s astronauts know well—feelings like sublimity—in the deep philosophical sense of the word: a mixture of awe and terror at the overwhelming profundity of nature. These emotions humble us, they connect us.

For in no other place on nocturnal Earth as in parks like the Grand Canyon, can we stand between so much deep time revealed beneath us in stone and above us in star, and find these experiences that, at the end of the day, are what organizations like NASA and the National Park Service are founded upon: those that promote the exploration of outer space so that we may come to know our inner space.