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Dark Sky Festival
   August 2022 
(3rd week)

Festival at a glance  (sample - 2021 schedule)
Thursday (Aug 19)
   - Evening social  (meet-n-greet, refreshments, snacks)
   - Virtual keynote presentation  (Seth Shostak)
   - Observation session  (Dr. Roberta Bondar Northern Observatory)
Friday (Aug 20)
   - Afternoon youth activities and programs
   - Stellar Seminars  (presentation, workshops)
   - Welcome dinner
   - Virtual keynote presentation  (Andrew Chaikin)
   - Pine Lake early-bird session
Saturday (Aug 21)
   - Blessing ceremony  (fire feeding, drumming)
   - Afternoon youth activities and programs
   - Stellar seminars  (presentations, demonstration)
   - STEM project demonstrations
   - Festival dinner
   - Evening social activities  (keynote speaker, nature excursion)
   - Observation session  (telescopes, constellation tours, etc.)
Sunday (Aug 22)
   - Festival breakfast  (charcuterie plate, cereals, fruits)
   - Festival wrap up
Festival Schedule Outline  -  2021
DSF 2021 Virtual Guest Speakers
DSF 2021  Seminars / Workshops

2021 Ursa Major Sponsors

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What registration includes
Registration is an "all-inclusive" fee.
For clarity, the DSF Registration fees include:
   - Festival social activities, presentations, night viewing opportunities
   - Circus Science, STEM activities and projects, cosmic crafts
   - Seminars and workshops, presentations
   - Friday welcome dinner, Saturday festival dinner, Sunday breakfast
   - 2 nights camping at Pine Lake (Friday, Saturday)
​   - Access to viewing equipment (telescopes, binoculars)

Schedules may include additional tours or activities that are offered by other 3rd party groups or businesses. These will be clearly identified and the applicable fees for those activities will be noted.
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DSF Quick Links
DSF Frequently asked questions
Travel and Lodging Information
Area  /  Local Maps     (DSF info)
Information Links (3rd party sites)
  -  Wood Buffalo National Park
  -  Queen Elizabeth Campground (Fort Smith)
  -  Town of Fort Smith - Visitor Information
Virtual Guest Speakers (2021)
Thursday Evening:  8:00 pm / Festival Early Bird Social
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Seth Shostak
​Seth is Senior Astronomer and Institute Fellow at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California.  He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.  For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals.
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>>  Read Seth's full biography

Science Looks for the Aliens ​(Thursday presentation - Seth Shostak)
 
Are we alone in the universe?  The scientific hunt for extraterrestrial life is now into its sixth decade, and we still haven’t discovered any cosmic company.  Could all this mean that finding clever beings beyond Earth, even if it exists, is a project for the ages – one that might take centuries or longer?
 
New approaches and new technology for discovering extraterrestrial life suggest that there is reason to expect that we could uncover evidence of sophisticated civilizations – the type of aliens we see in the movies and on TV – within a few decades.
Friday Evening:  7:00 pm / Post-dinner Presentation
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Andrew Chaikin
Space historian Andrew Chaikin is best known as the author of "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts", which tells the stories of the Apollo missions through the eyes of the astronauts. The book was the main basis for Tom Hanks’ 12-part Emmy-winning miniseries for HBO, “From the Earth to the Moon.”

>>  Read Andrew's full biography

Stories and Lessons from the Moon (Friday presentation - A Chaikin)

Space historian Andrew Chaikin conducted extensive interviews with 23 of the 24 Apollo lunar astronauts while researching his 1994 book, A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. He will share some of the stories he heard during those conversations, about what they saw, thought, and felt during their historic explorations - including the elation and awe of setting foot on an ancient, alien wilderness, the demands of being lunar field geologists under the merciless pressure of the timeline, and the beauty of the Moon itself and the distant Earth suspended in a sky of utter blackness.

Andrew will also explore some of the lessons of the first lunar landings for NASA’s return-to-the-Moon program, Artemis.

Contact Us

Thebacha & Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society
PO Box 1354
Fort Smith, NT   X0E 0P0
Telephone:  1-867-872-0243
Email:  info@tawbas.ca
​Wood Buffalo National Park
PO Box 790
Fort Smith, NT  X0E 0P0
Telephone:   1-867-872-7960
Email:  wbnp.info@pc.gc.ca
Town of Fort Smith
PO Box 147
Fort Smith, NT  X0E 0P0  
Telephone:   1-867-872-8400
Email:  townoffortsmith@fortsmith.ca
​Updated:  2 Sept 2021
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