RASC Hamilton Wood Buffalo Dark Sky Festival

[Ken Baigent]

Hey Gary:

Not sure if any of you have attended the Wood Buffalo Dark Sky Festival 
near Fort Smith NWT (see pages 20 - 24 of Sept/Oct SkyNews) however it 
is coming up on Aug. 22 - 24. We will unfortunately miss it as we fly 
back from Yellowknife to Toronto on the 22nd, returning to Yellowknife 
on Sept. 5th.

There is obviously not too much star gazing occurring here through the 
summer (with 22 hours of daylight in late June), however we're currently 
losing about an hour of daylight every 10-12 days ........... so star 
gazing & aurora viewing will soon be amazing again !!!!

Our 2nd challenge this year are the vast number of forest fires that are 
smoking us out. The only road in/out of Yellowknife is closed more than 
it's open. You can see the current fire situation up here via this link 
(http://www.nwtfire.com/cms/). Click on the Live Fire Map link, unclick 
the "fire danger" selector and click the "NWT Wildfires" selector. We're 
surrounded by fire in Yellowknife (Johnny Cash's "Burning Ring of Fire" 
comes to mind). Not much of a summer up here - the only good thing is 
smoked meat (bison, moose, bear) just walks right into town 
............... yum, smoked bison !!!

We may have a chance to attend a Hamilton RASC event while we're back. 
If not, we'll be sure to come out when we're back again for 3 weeks over 
X-Mas & New Years.

Have a great week

Ken, Elizabeth & Jakob Baigent

The local paper had a fun cartoon in advance of the Dary Sky Festival




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