We spent the past few days at Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick, looking out on the relatively warm waters of Northumberland Strait (toward Prince Edward Island).\u00a0 I’ll let students write about our days.\u00a0 Here, I’ll just comment on our nights.<\/p>\n
Stars.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I think this part of New Brunswick participates in a dark-night initiative in which they intentionally minimize the amount of nighttime illumination.\u00a0 That means fewer bright signs, downward-directed lighting, and dimmer lighting in general.\u00a0 The effects are spectacular.<\/p>\n
For several clear nights in a row, we could see not only the big, bright stars, but even the myriad little ones.\u00a0 I saw constellations that I haven’t seen in years.\u00a0 Milky Way?\u00a0 Oh yeah, bright from horizon to horizon.<\/p>\n
Satellites? Oh yeah, 2, 3, and sometimes even 4 satellites could be seen simultaneously, some moving in parallel paths, some in criss-crossing paths.\u00a0 Some brighter and moving fast, others dimmer (farther away) and moving slowly.<\/p>\n
And then of course, there were the shooting stars.\u00a0 August is a good month for shooting stars in general, and we weren’t disappointed.\u00a0 On two occasions I saw a flash, rather than a streak, which probably was a shooting star coming almost directly\u00a0toward us, rather than across the sky; sorry, no photos!<\/p>\n
The price\u00a0for the beautiful night sky\u00a0was collected by the mosquitoes.\u00a0 But they were really only bad from 2 hours before sunrise and sunset to 2 hours after sunset and sunset (and sometimes in the middle of the day if the wind wasn’t blowing).\u00a0 The campfires certainly helped, and the skeeters pretty much disappeared by the time we got to\u00a0dessert and games of Liar’s Dice.<\/p>\n
The academic content is getting a bit thicker about now, with a recent labor-intensive beach transect and a lab report on bedrock fracture patterns due tomorrow.\u00a0 Fortunately,\u00a0frisbee on the beach\u00a0and good food\u00a0soften the discomfort.\u00a0 Hard to believe, but they have a mid-term exam (for Climate Change and Glacial Geology) on Friday.<\/p>\n
– Johan Erikson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We spent the past few days at Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick, looking out on the relatively warm waters of Northumberland Strait (toward Prince Edward Island).\u00a0 I’ll let students write about our days.\u00a0 Here, I’ll just comment on our nights. Stars.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I think this part of New Brunswick participates in a dark-night initiative … Continue reading Night Skies<\/span>