Waterton Lakes National Park is the perfect place to celebrate the beauty, mystery and wonder of the night sky.
This weekend, Dark Sky Guides hosts its inaugural Dark Sky Discovery Days, with a three-day festival blending science, storytelling and stargazing.
Exploring the Aurora Borealis is the festival’s debut theme, which is all about curiosity and connection.
The weekend includes exploring the Northern Lights through presentations, workshops, Indigenous sky stories and art. All events take place at the Waterton Community Centre and surrounding sites.
Activities will include a solar gazing sun party with live telescope viewing, guided night sky tours, planetarium shows and a bat exhibit.
President and Co-Founder of Dark Sky Guides Keith Robinson says as a designated Dark Sky Park, Waterton is the perfect setting to bring people together to learn, share and experience the night sky in new and inspiring ways.
Since the park’s declaration, Robinson notes, people’s interest in the night sky has certainly expanded. “More people are travelling to places like Waterton because there’s no light pollution and there are very few streetlights.”
With the regular tours and the festival, Robinson would like to remind visitors it’s not just about the busy summer tours and months in Waterton. “The National Park is open year-round.”
“And there are a number of business owner/operators offering services throughout the entire year. September and October are my favourite times of year in the National Park,” Robinson adds.
Each evening during the festival, Robinson says, there will be guest keynote speakers discussing something related to the night sky. During the daytime hours, there will be an exhibit to discover information on Waterton’s nocturnal creatures.
“We have the Lethbridge Astronomy Society coming in and they’re going to help us by kicking off the weekend Friday evening with a star party. We’re going to have a whole bunch of different telescopes set up and everybody is welcome to just come and chit-chat with the telescope operators and peer through the eyepiece on a telescope to look at a number of different deep sky objects, things you can’t see with the naked eye,” adds Robinson.
The Waterton Planetarium will also be offering a variety of night sky-themed films throughout the entire weekend.
According to Robinson, the planetarium opened in 2024 and is open year-round. “We’re open daily throughout the entire year. But for the festival, we’re relocating the planetarium into one of the classrooms in the Community Centre.”
Robinson explains Dark Sky Guides started off with nighttime stargazing tours in 2018. “We’ve grown quite a bit. We’ve got a fantastic team of very experienced dark sky guides – people well-equipped, educated and trained to take people out and help them discover the night sky.”
Whether you’ve seen the night sky in Waterton before or not, Robinson notes organizers tried to schedule the festival, so there won’t be a lot of moonlight in the sky. “We’re anticipating a very nice dark sky, which should enable us to see lots of faint dim stars, lots of distant objects in the night sky and hopefully still catch a glimpse of the Milky Way. And if we’re lucky, like the theme of our festival, the Northern Lights – the Aurora Borealis.”
To view the full schedule, purchase tickets or for more information about this weekend’s festival visit online at darkskydiscoverydays.ca.
