The inaugural Upper Peninsula Dark Sky Park Festival was held by the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, in partnership with Visit Keweenaw, April 21st and 22nd, 2023. This is exciting times for the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge as the headquarters of the Keweenaw Dark Sky Park. It signals the importance of the dark skies in the Keweenaw and to human and wildlife.
The festival was 1.5 days of activities focused on dark skies, and enjoying stargazing and the Northern Lights. The speakers at the festival were (shown in alphabetical order):
- Nate Bett, Dark Sky / Northern Lights Photographer
- Chris Guibert, Keweenaw Mountain Lodge / Keweenaw Dark Sky Park
- Amber Harrison, International Dark-Sky Association
- Andrew Johnson, Headlands Dark Sky Park
- Melissa Kaelin, Author, Below the 45th Parallel
- MaryBeth Kiczenski, Dark Sky / Northern Lights Photographer
- “Astro” Bob King, Astronomy Author
- John Mueller, Keweenaw Mountain Lodge / Keweenaw Dark Sky Park
- Amy Oestreich, Keweenaw Mountain Lodge / Keweenaw Dark Sky Park
- Tom Oliver, Michigan Tech University Center for Environmental Science and Outreach
- Robert Parrish, Dr. T.K. Lawless Dark Sky Park
- Jamie Westfall, Headlands Dark Sky Park
The festival was held during 2023 Earth Day, which is inline with the theme of dark skies and the values of the Lodge.
During the festival, it was announced the Lights Out! program at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge / Keweenaw Dark Sky Park. Installed light switches for each of the street lights, and turned off all the street lights during the festival.
As part of the operations philosophy of the Lodge, we had a maximum number of people that could attend the festival. This is an optimal number of visitors in order to ensure that the desired experience is experienced by the guests. That number was 50 officially registered guests, which was sold out 2 weeks before the event.
This is an annual event, with the 2024 Upper Peninsula Dark Sky Festival to be held sometime in April.
Photo Gallery
Below are images from the 2023 Upper Peninsula Dark Sky Festival.
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