Symposium to tackle dark-sky issues in Columbia River Gorge

It’s still really dark at night in Goldendale, Washington. Goldendale Observatory State Park has been designated as an international dark-sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association, and the area sits at the northern end of what is arguably the best stretch of good, dark, night sky left in the United States, running south through eastern Oregon and even into northern Nevada and California.

“We’re really blessed with dark skies,” said Jonathan Lewis, a board member of the Goldendale Chamber of Commerce who heads up the renewable energy division for Hire Electric in The Dalles, Oregon. “People buy property out here so they can see the Milky Way.”

“We’re close enough to Seattle and Portland that it makes it practical for people to come out here just to enjoy the night sky,” Lewis added.

That sky needs some maintenance.

Threats to the night sky

The Goldendale Observatory State Park sits on a bluff
above the city and has a spectacular view of Mt. Hood.
A symposium aimed at preserving dark skies in the Columbia
Gorge will be held in Goldendale and The Dalles Aug. 18-19.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“We’re realizing that the night sky, even in our rural communities, is in danger with the rapid deployment of LED technology, primarily,” Lewis noted. “It’s just getting cheaper and cheaper to do brighter and brighter lights.”

Brighter is not better. The City of Goldendale is in the process of revamping its lighting ordinance, and will soon be upgrading its street lighting. As discussions occurred, Lewis sensed that the lighting people and the lovers of dark night skies were not always on the same page.

“Out of all of that, this idea for a symposium to get the lighting industry professionals and the astronomy folks together in the same place to talk about challenges and ways to make this all happen came about,” Lewis said.

The Gorge Night Sky Symposium

The Goldendale Area Chamber of Commerce, Friends of Goldendale Observatory, and the Mid-Columbia Economic Development District are organizing the Gorge Night Sky Symposium, which will be held August 18-19, 2016, at the Goldendale Observatory State Park and at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles. The event has also received a significant sponsorship grant from Google, which operates a data center in The Dalles, as well as from a variety of other supporters.

The symposium session Thursday, August 18 at the observatory will feature food and drink as well as a keynote talk from Paul Bogard, dark-sky activist and author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (Little, Brown, 2013). The Friday sessions at the Discovery Center will include a presentation by David Ingram, chair of Dark Skies Northwest, the regional chapter of the IDA. There will also be talks about how bad lighting effects wildlife. The afternoon will include working groups about lighting technology, ordinance making, and lighting incentive programs and how to make them work to encourage people to choose dark-sky compliant fixtures.

The symposium has already attracted a pretty thorough list of decision makers, operators of major businesses in the Gorge, and energy services staff from area utilities. Lewis figures this gives them a good chance to reach their goals for the symposium:

“To heighten the awareness, so that when people are out talking in their community or encouraging people to upgrade in their lighting, they add the dark-sky piece to it,” he said, and, “To make it hard for people to buy non-dark-sky-compliant lighting in the Gorge.”

Lighting history in Goldendale

There’s a bit of irony in the notion that this effort has to happen in Goldendale. Amateur astronomers from Vancouver, Washington built the observatory’s primary telescope, a 24 1/2-inch instrument, in the early 1970s. They donated it to the city under the stipulation that it enact a lighting ordinance.
“Goldendale really had one of the first lighting ordinances” in the state, said Lewis, but it’s a bit out of date. “It was based on high-pressure sodium, full shielding, very different technologies.”

On top of that, enforcement of the existing code has been inconsistent at best.

“The lighting has gone sideways a little bit,” Lewis said. “Now, as people are looking to retrofit, we’d like to get a handle on that.”

A good dark sky at night is important to Goldendale, because astronomy tourism has become significant for the local economy. Upwards of 20,000 visitors stop in at the observatory each year, and many astronomy clubs hold observing events in the area.

“The key piece for the Goldendale Chamber of Commerce in our tourism strategy is to get more people to this observatory,” Lewis said. “It’s very important.”

Improvements at the observatory

Wind power turbines line the horizon as seen from Goldendale
Observatory State Park. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Lewis noted that there have been positive changes at the observatory of late. Recently hired staff have been an improvement, and the state will invest about $6 million in the park over the next four years. That will pay for refurbishing the main telescope, one of the largest public scopes in operation. The work will essentially bring it up to research grade. They’ll also remodel the facility to include a bigger meeting room and auditorium.

“It’s very exciting what the state parks are doing with this observatory,” Lewis said.

If you would like to attend the symposium, you can register online through the Mid Columbia Economic Development District. The fee for the full symposium is just $55, and there are one-day sessions available as well.

More information:

• Gorge Night Sky website
• Symposium page
• Online registration
• Gorge Night Sky on Facebook
• International Dark-Sky Association
• Friends of Goldendale Observatory

Catching the 2017 total solar eclipse on the Great Plains

Nebraska is the state to be in on the Great Plains for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. The path of totality sweeps across the Cornhusker State from northwest to southeast, catching just a small northeastern corner of Kansas as it sweeps on toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Great American Eclipse website has listed the Nebraska sandhills among the best spots along the path of totality for viewing the eclipse.

In Stapleton, a town of 300 people about 30 miles north of North Platte, they’re billing the event as the “Eclipse on the Range.” They’ve determined that the centerline of the eclipse path crosses the Augusta Wind Golf Course about a mile south of town. In fact, it goes right over an outhouse that sits between the number 4 and number 7 tee boxes on the nine-hole course.

“We would consider that the most prime viewing spot,” said Gary Johnsen, a retired science teacher who is the eclipse coordinator in Stapleton. We agreed it would be a shame to be stuck inside the outhouse during the two minutes and 33 seconds of totality that will happen in Stapleton. The town’s other main viewing site will be the Logan County Fairgrounds on the east end of town.

Cattle tanking in the Nebraska sandhills. These tanks are usually
filled with water for cattle on ranches, but they make fine vessels
as well. Photo courtesy Gary Johnsen.

Despite its small size, Stapleton is going all out. The Logan County Rodeo, usually at the end of August, has been moved up to the week before the eclipse to take advantage of the expected up-tick in visitors. In addition to the rodeo, other events in the works for pre-eclipse week include a breakfast and barbecue, wild horse racing, a street dance, beer garden, and a working ranch rodeo. They’re also offering cattle tank rides on the South Loup River. Sunday before the eclipse there will be on open-air, non-denominational church service at the fairgrounds, and in the evening local resident Derryl Barr, who has seen quite a number of total solar eclipses, will make a presentation about what to expect.

Visitor crunch

Stapleton isn’t sure how many visitors will show up. Johnsen said they’ve heard guesses for anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000.

“If we get the upper number, the 10,000, we would probably be scrambling really, really hard to find places for people to stay,” Johnsen said. There are no motels in the town, but it is working on increasing the number of RV hookups available. Some residents may rent out rooms in their homes, or offer use of their own RVs or campers. They’re also working with the North Platte/Lincoln County Visitors Bureau to identify lodging opportunities in the area.

Johnsen said the golf course site features unobstructed 360-degree views, and the projection is for a 75 percent chance of clear skies that time of year.

“We have a very, very good viewing site, a very high probability of being able to view it,” he said. “Plus we’re on highway 83 which runs basically from Canada to Mexico, and we have access roads that run east of us, so if for some reason we would be cloudy (eclipse chasers) would be able go east very easily.”

Other Nebraska events

Muriel Clark at the visitors bureau noted that a number of other communities have plans as well. The city of Alliance is planning a major celebration at CarHenge, and yes, that’s just what it sounds like; a model of Stonehenge made with cars. It’s an astronomical theme! Scottsbluff and Gering will be hosting an event, likely at Scotts Bluff National Monument. The community of Kearney is partnering with the village of Ravenna for viewing festivities. Grand Island will host an event at the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. York is partnering with Wessels Living History Farm, Lincoln will seek to fill the University of Nebraska Cornhusker’s Memorial Stadium to view the eclipse, and the city of Beatrice is partnering with Homestead National Monument for the  Darkness on the Prairie viewing event.

Eclipse in Kansas

Only a small corner of Kansas gets totality, including part of the city of Kansas City, which is half within the path and half out. Jackie Beucher, an officer of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City (ASKC) as well as the Mid-States Region of the Astronomical League, has led eclipse excursions all over the world, and is delighted that this time she won’t have to brave rough seas, remote areas, and language challenges. The ASKC will be involved with Michael Bakich of Astronomy magazine and Front Page Science at an eclipse-day event at Rosecrans Memorial Airport in St. Joseph, Missouri. Front Page has leased the whole airport for eclipse day and will host free public viewing, complete with astronomy experts and lots of solar telescopes for viewing the Sun before and after totality.

“We expect huge crowds,” Beucher said.

The ASKC is working with area schools and libraries to educate people about the eclipse, and is busy with its own outreach, too.

“We’ve already started giving eclipse programs at our observatories every night they’re open,” Beucher said.

Planning ahead is important, Beucher said. The down side for the great access to this total solar eclipse is that a lot of places, especially in more rural areas, may not be ready for the crunch.
“These little municipalities along the path of the eclipse, they’re just going to be just slammed with people,” Beucher said. “There are 200 million people that live within 80 miles on each side of the eclipse across the country,” she pointed out, raising the possibility of huge traffic jams and a scramble for accommodations. A little advance work will be well worth it, she said.

“The experience is incredible, it is mind changing, mind lifting like you wouldn’t believe,” said Beucher of total solar eclipses. “I have goose bumps right now just talking about it.”

Infinity Box pushing for science fluency through theater

Seattle Astronomy has occasionally explored the relationships and intersections of science with art and faith. Recently we had an enjoyable experience helping to use theater to explain science when we participated in an event called Centrifuge with the Infinity Box Theatre Project.

Centrifuge was billed as “science news meets science fiction.” The event paired five science writers with five playwrights on a Monday evening. By Wednesday each playwright had written a one-act play about a randomly drawn theme, incorporating recent scientific developments brought to the table by the science writers. On Wednesday the cast and directors were paired at random. They had a couple of days to rehearse, and then Friday and Saturday evenings the new plays were performed, preceded by five-minute talks by the writers explaining the science that would appear in the play. It’s a pattern familiar to those who have seen the 14/48 Projects World’s Quickest Theater Festival.

Your correspondent explained asteroid 2016 HO3 and Planet 9
before a performance of the Jennifer Dice play “Asteroids of
Love” at Centrifuge. Infinity Box photo by Omar Willey.

We brought the news of Earth’s newly found quasi-satellite, 2016 HO3, plus recent computer modeling for the possible existence of Planet 9, to the table. Playwright Jennifer Dice came up with the hilarious play Asteroids of Love. Catherine Blake Smith directed actors Marianna de Fazio and Corey Spruill in the play, a sort of space noir about star-crossed lovers Sybil and Chet headed to Planet 9 to start a new life—and ditch the intergalactic mob. The evening also included plays that incorporated new discoveries in frog mating, human evolution, climate change, and memory loss.

David Mills and Catherine Kettrick created Infinity Box about eight years ago with the intent to create exactly this sort of mash-up between science and theater.

“The idea of Infinity Box is really thinking of a theater as a think tank, and what happens if you look at theater as basically the way that society has always done its collective thinking,” Mills said. He noted that science and technology are advancing rapidly and giving us a lot that we need to consider.

“A lot of the questions are so complex that a story is really the only way to really ask the question, let alone try to answer it,” Mills said.

Kettrick added that this gives scientists new ways to think and talk about their work and an effective means of connecting with people.

“When an audience is able to look at a play on stage and see the issue of the science embodied in the characters and see the characters reacting to this issue, to this situation, that’s a much more real experience than reading an article in the newspaper or even going to a town hall talk,” she said. “It’s human beings up there, there’s an empathetic connection.”

It even worked on Kettrick, who knows all about climate change and does what she can to reduce her own carbon footprint. But the play Chasm by Bret Fetzer and directed by Jon Lutyens spoke to her. It was about climate change from the perspective of two penguins stranded on an iceberg and vulnerable to predators.

“Seeing those two penguins just brought it home to me, on a very personal level, in a way that doesn’t happen when you read the statistics,” she said.

Infinity Box is the title of a short story and story collection written in the 1970s by Kate Wilhelm, and it inspired the name for the theater project because what we now know as think tanks were originally called brain boxes.

“Your brain or a theater stage or a radio are all places that are small, but anything is possible,” Mills said.

The next event for Infinity Box is its annual Thought Experiments on the Question of Being Human, which this year will take on the topics of memory and identity. Earlier this year they paired up four scientists and four playwrights.

“They work up a play typically 20 to 30 minutes long exploring the human consequences of what’s happening now or soon probably will be in that area, and what might that mean for the question of what it means to be human,” Mills explained. Staged readings of the plays will be held October 14, 15, and 16 at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre in the University District in Seattle. After the readings the scientists will kick off audience discussions about the shows.

“What the scientists have been getting out of that is a really different sort of conversation about their work,” Mills said.

Mills is hopeful that some day Infinity Box will be funded as a think tank.

“Having ways of doing all of what we’ve done so far and then capturing those insights and doing some analysis on them and feeding them back in to see what happens would fascinating and useful data,” he said. Ultimately, he’d like to move society beyond science literacy to science fluency.
“We’re looking at enhancing the status of discussion of science in society,” Mills said.

Astro art and artifacts update

An astronomy device that had been damaged is back in operation, while a city-wide solar system model is, alas, showing signs of decay.

We reported back in August of last year that the Foucault pendulum in the Physics/Astronomy building at the University of Washington was out of commission. While the UW wasn’t saying specifically, we suspected the damage may have been caused by people not well versed in engineering trying to take a ride on the pendulum.

We’d noticed construction happening at the pendulum on some visits to campus in late winter and early spring, and we’re happy to report that it’s back in the swing of things again.



Back in February we told you about a fun project out of Three Dragons Academy, an arts program for elementary-aged children. The students created a scale model of the solar system, a city-wide art installation in which the Sun is an 18-foot circle painted and chalked onto the south plaza of the University Heights Center at NE 50th Street and Brooklyn Avenue NE. Uranus, at this scale, was down on Alki beach, not far from Seattle Astronomy headquarters.

On a recent trip to the U-District we stumbled upon Mercury, which is, in an interesting twist, right outside Neptune Music. Since we were so close, we sought out the Sun and found it still as advertised at the center. That’s the University Heights Center, not the center of the universe. As Copernicus discovered, that’s in Fremont.

Mercury is a little worse for wear, given nearly half a year out in the elements. Uranus has vanished from Alki; perhaps it’s moved along in its orbit!

You can read about the project (click the “projects” icon at the bottom of the page) on the Three Dragons website.