National Parks To Celebrate Night Skies With Upcoming Festivals

The National Park Service is 100 percent on-board with the idea of preserving dark skies for all who wish to see them—from astronomy buffs to night photographers and everyone in between. It even maintains a Night Sky page on its website, and offers access to a Night Sky Monitoring Database of the entire U.S.

But not only does the NPS protect and promote the night skies, it also creates opportunities to explore and learn about them.

Lassen Dark Sky Festival, NPS Photo

Many of the parks offer ranger-led programs for visitors to experience night the way it once appeared everywhere, before the dawn of electrically lit cities and civilizations. For example, Pinnacles National Park offers night hikes, and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia offers an Evening Meadow Walk (in Big Meadows, no less, one of my favorites spaces in the entire park system!). Even New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, whose star attraction is underground, shows off the night skies with its recurring Star Parties and Moon Walks.

But several of the parks go even bigger, hosting full-scale festivals that celebrate the night. They feature all sorts of spectator and interactive programs, including lectures by astronomers, telescope usage, photography workshops and more.

Photo by NPS/Brad Sutton

These are all excellent opportunities to get into the parks to learn and explore the night with like-minded people.

This year’s Death Valley Star Party is already behind us (it was in February), but there are plenty of park-hosted night-sky festivals on the horizon for summer and early fall. To help you find one (or more!) to attend, we’ve compiled the list below. If you attend, let us know how it goes—and send photos!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon Astronomy Festival

June 1-4, Colorado

Highlights: Constellation tours, Tyler Nordgren presentation and book signing, telescope observations, "Nightscape Photography Workshop"

Bryce Canyon National Park

Annual Astronomy Festival

June 1-4, Utah

Highlights: hosted by Bryce Canyon's astronomy rangers and the Salt Lake Astronomical Society; keynote speaker Seth Jarvis from the Clark Planetarium

Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon Star Party

June 4–11, Arizona

Highlights: access to multiple telescopes on both rims of the canyon, nightly presentations and slide shows; assistance from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix

Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park Astronomy Festival

July 8-10, South Dakota

Highlights: family-friendly activities and evening presentations with special guest speakers; nightly telescope viewing sponsored by the NPS Night Sky Program and Celestron

Rocky Mountain National Park

Night Sky Festival

July 28-30, Colorado

Highlights: activities, speakers, programs and night sky viewing

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Dark Sky Festival

August 5-7, California

Highlights: astronaut speakers; special Crystal Cave tours; audio-visual and photography presentations

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Dark Sky Festival

August 12-14, California

Highlights: constellation tours; solar scope viewing; discussions and demonstrations by National Park Dark Sky rangers, NASA, International Dark Sky Association, RECON, Astronomical Society of Nevada and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Acadia National Park

Acadia Night Sky Festival

September 22-25, Maine

Highlights: workshops; internationally recognized speakers; hands-on experiences

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Dakota Nights Astronomy Festival

September 23-25, North Dakota

Highlights: star viewing; presentations by nationally recognized speakers; rocket building and launching; solar system hikes

Great Basin National Park

Great Basin Astronomy Festival

September 29 - October 1, Nevada

Highlights: viewing through over 30 telescopes (some as tall as 20 feet); "Astronomy 101" presentation; Night Sky Photography Workshop by the "Dark Rangers"

Joshua Tree National Park

Night Sky Festival

October 28-30, California

Highlights: astronomers, scientists, cultural speakers and artists

Chris Nicholson is the author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

Finding Our Parks: How We Participated in National Parks Week

Click to experience the map!

In late April, we hit the road NPAN style. We chose to celebrate the National Parks Service's free entrance days for National Park Week by taking a whirlwind tour of Southern Utah.

Gabe, Matt and Chris were joined by our friend Sean in Las Vegas and we hit the road in a car and on two motorcycles. Our trip led us through three national parks (including Zion, which wasn't a destination, but how could we not at least drive through?) and two national monuments. It was epic, and awe-inspiring.

Our routine was great! Eat a substantial breakfast, hit the road, drive through some amazing landscapes, grab some food and head out into the park to go shooting for the late afternoon and evening (often until 2 or 3 a.m.).

Here are individual highlights from the adventurers:

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Bryce Canyon National Park - by Matt Hill

“Love them hoodoos.”

— Matt

My first impression was a gasp when I viewed Bryce Canyon under a full moon. A massive canyon filled with hoodoos and trees. And gorgeous shadows. It was brutally cold, even for late April, and we withstood the wind on the canyon rim to enjoy the view and make some images.

Upon descending into the canyon, the wind died, as well as my hopes for avoiding aerobic exercise for the day. ;-) What goes down, must come up! That canyon is deeeeeep and steeeeeep. Nonetheless, we hiked into the hoodoo field and I spent a lot of time playing with the relationship between eroded sandstone rock and living wood. What a gorgeous juxtaposition of colors, textures and shapes.

We're fortunate the skies cooperated in a big way. Very happy with our experience there, despite hiking back up the canyon with 30+ lbs. in my backpack at altitude.

Visit the Bryce Canyon Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Capitol Reef National Park - by Chris Nicholson

“Capitol Reef simply shines in the dark!”

— Chris

Capitol Reef has been on my bucket list for a couple of years, so I was thrilled we were including it on our road trip.

But to get there, first we drove through the big shocker of the trip: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. None of us knew much about it, other than that it exists. And it's beautiful! We stopped about four or five times, mesmerized by both its size and its amazing landscapes. We didn't have time to linger, but we will be back there someday for sure.

We arrived at Capitol Reef with just enough time to scout some locations in daylight, which is important in a place with such dark night skies. (Capitol Reef is one of only three national parks designated as Gold Tier by the International Dark-Sky Association.) Checking our Photo Pills app, we knew we would have one hour of utter darkness before the moon rose, so we planned to start our evening photographing star trails at Chimney Rock.

From there we went to the orchards in Fruita, a remnant of the vibrant agricultural community in that area more than a century ago. The orchard proved difficult to photograph, primarily because it’s the one spot we did not scout well; instead of shooting right away, we spent 45 minutes walking around in the dark trying to imagine some compositions.

We ended the night near Panorama Point. We’d scouted a nice location with a road S-curving in front of a distant mountain. We each set up a composition, and Gabe manned our intervalometers while Matt drove the car and I held a Pixelstick out the sunroof, creating light trails along the road. The creativity was fun, but the wind was brutal and cold, so as soon as we felt we nailed the shot, we packed things in for the night.

On our second night in Capitol Reef, we were joined by our friend Steve Ryan, a sports photographer from New York City. He was very gracious in agreeing to drive us out to Cathedral Valley, an area filled with wonderfully photogenic rock formations accessible only by primitive roads. Unfortunately, a quick storm a few hours before departure made those roads impassable.

So instead we night-hiked to The Tanks, a series of natural water holes a short (but steep) climb up from Capitol Gorge. It was a gorgeous hike (ha! see what I did there?), a challenging (but fun) shoot, followed by a photograph-slowed hike back out of the gorge.

We are all eager to run a night-photography workshop in Capitol Reef some year soon. Stay tuned!

Visit the Capitol Reef Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Natural Bridges National Monument - by Gabriel Biderman

“Bridges that lead you to the darkest of skies.”

— Gabe

Our quest for the darkest skies leads us to some very remote locations. But the opportunity to work with no light pollution and crystal-clear skies with thousands of stars is an experience no one will forget.

Natural Bridges National Monument is one of those special places. Located 40 miles from the nearest town in Southeast Utah, Natural Bridges is the oldest National Park Service site in Utah (1908) and was the first “Dark Sky Park” to be certified by the International Dark-Sky Association.

We arrived a few hours before sunset and had the most amazing conversation with Ranger Ted Hodson as he shared his stories, photographs and advice for how we could make the most of our one evening. Imagine three bridges that lie at the bottom of a deep canyon, formed from an ancient river over 260 million years ago.

You can do the 8-mile loop drive (in 20 minutes) and get little peeks of two of the three bridges, but the real adventure lies when you walk down the canyon and see the bridges act like windows to the stars.

So that’s what we did. With overcast weather looming we chose the path to Owachoma—probably the most photographed of the three bridges. We had seen the images at the visitor center and were focused on looking for new angles. I put myself right under the bridge and Matt and Chris found an oblique angle to start brushing light under the bridge. The three of us worked together on a few more angles and group light painting until the clouds enveloped the stars.

They say you can see 15,000 stars on a clear night at Natural Bridges. I stopped counting after 500.

Visit the Natural Bridges Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Thanks for reading. Tell us if you participated, and how, in National Park Week. Did you #findyourpark? We'd love to hear more!

Job well done.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

NPAN to Lecture at B&H OPTIC Conference June 5-8 in NYC

We are honored to join B&H on-stage for the second annual OPTIC Imaging Conference and Tradeshow about Travel, Outdoor & Wildlife Photography.

On June 6 (Day Two) at 3:45pm, all five of our instructors will be presenting:

Night Visions of National Parks

Description: Ever wanted to come away from an experience in a National Park with outstanding and unique images? The NPAN teams takes to the OPTIC stage at once; Gabriel Biderman, Tim Cooper, Matt Hill, Lance Keimig, and Chris Nicholson, all diverse night photographers and educators, as they explore options for finding your clearest and most creative voice in America's natural wilderness–at night.

So please RSVP (it's free!) and join us live and in person, or from anywhere in the world via the LiveStream.

You can also visit us at a table during the open trade show hours to chat about night photography & national parks or to browse the books our educators have to offer. Drop by for a free NPAN sticker and tell us you read about it here.

And don't forget to RSVP and attend the Nikon-sponsored Dinner Party and Cocktail reception on the evening of June 5th. Details here.

See more about Matt's photography, art, workshops and writing at MattHillArt.com. Follow Matt on Twitter Instagram Facebook.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night