Growing up I, moved around a lot.
And, I, still move around a lot.
I think that’s something that’s true of simply being human
in the 21st Century at this point.
Now, after studying astronomy and being inspired by it,
I can be at home wherever I am,
and watch the patterns in the sky rise for their
seasonal dance over the celestial sphere,
and that brings me this immense sense of home
that I think is crucial for our well-being.
It wouldn’t be the wilderness without the stars.
Our very idea of place involves a starry sky overhead
when you come to some place like Grand Canyon National Park.
The sky is one of those things that has stimulated generations of scientists,
generations of people to wonder about the world.
Religion, philosophy, mysticism, astrology, science,
all of those have their roots in wondering about
the sky, in wondering about our place in this Universe.
Grand Canyon is an amazing place to experience
the night sky. We are some of the darkest skies in
the country. Primarily because we are situated
high above a good portion of the atmosphere
here on the Colorado Plateau.
So we are at 7,000 feet on the South Rim, which
allows us to see the night sky without the
distortion of atmosphere, molecules, aerosols, dust.
If you look at a light pollution map of the United States
the East Coast is pretty much completely white washed
with excess light and light pollution,
whereas, in the Southwest, there are still
completely dark patches left.
And so they have become somewhat of sanctuaries
for the night and Grand Canyon
is certainly one of those sanctuaries.
In the city where I live, I can look up into the sky
and I can count all the stars there.
In fact that is a question that almost ever child
has as some point,
‘how many stars are there in the sky?’
Well sadly I know that in the city where I live,
the answer is twelve, and one of those is probably an airplane.
As a result, there's very few incentives for me
to ever look at the sky anymore,
and fifty percent of the
world’s population now lives in cities.
Under those types of skies, what reason does
a child ever have to look up anymore?
There is nothing there.
There is nothing to be seen.
And so we’ve lost something. We’ve lost something really fundamental.
Not just about out natural world,
but how we see that world.
How we see ourselves.
How we approach the great questions of life.
We want to protect the night sky in the park
because there are so many visitors here who
would not have the experience of seeing the
Milky Way anywhere else.
We have some good lights here in the canyon,
and we have some bad lights here in the canyon.
And our goal is to change those bad lights so that
we are not contributing to light pollution inside the park.
One of the most important things that visitors can
do when they are looking at lighting in their own
homes is do they really need the light at all?
That’s one of the best energy efficient savings
and night sky friendly things you can do is
determine if you need the light at all.
So, Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919,
but there are still external threats to the integrity of the night sky here, to this day.
Already we can see the sky glow faintly of Las Vegas.
We can see a little bit of sky glow from Tuba City;
a little bit from Flagstaff and Williams.
And there is even to this day proposed development
right on the outside of Grand Canyon National Park’s entrance
that would undoubtedly have negative effects
on the pristine nature of the night sky
here at Grand Canyon.
One of the best ways, in my opinion, to experience
the night skies here, is to come to our
annual star party event that we have every summer.
We have been doing it decades at this point.
I want the people who are coming here to have the experience of seeing something they
may never see again in their lives.
We do this because we love it.
We love working with the people.
We love the exclamations of just, oh wow!
when they see something in the telescope.
I have had kids think that we painted Saturn on
the inside of the telescope because
they have never seen it look like that.
When I look up into a star filled sky.
like that on display every night in Grand Canyon National Park,
I feel a sense of beauty and joy, and actually a sense of belonging.
When I see that Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon,
I know that I belong.
I know that we, here on Earth are part of
something vastly larger than ourselves.
We are part of a collection of a hundred billion stars.
And of those one hundred billion stars we alone,
as far as we know,
have the ability to understand the beauty around us.
We are made of the same thing that the star are.
We are made of atoms that were born in the hearts of stars.
We are stars made sentient.
And that’s what we can see when we go out
and we look at a dark sky above Grand Canyon.
We can see that beauty of which we are an integral part.