♪ This is a small patch of Maine's 100 mile wilderness.

There's a lot of wildlife here and very little light pollution.

That's why these folks have traveled here.

So we are in the Appalachian Mountain Club's 100 mile wilderness.

They own 120,000 acres of land here.

And there are three lodges on the property.

My name is John Meader.

I am the owner and director of Northern Stars Planetarium.

It's a portable planetarium.

I travel to elementary and middle schools across the state of Maine serving about 15 to 18,000 kids a year teaching astronomy.

My name is Shawn Laatsch.

I'm the director of the Versant Power Astronomy Center and Jordan Planetarium at the University of Maine.

We're a planetarium and a small observatory.

We serve K-12 schools, the university and the general public.

John and Shawn are at Little Lyford Lodge.

They're here to help out with the Appalachian mountain club's See The Dark festival.

We're about 150 miles north of Portland, Maine.

And if you go from Portland south down the east coast of the United States, if you were in space looking down at nighttime, it's all lit up because you got, you know, every 80 to 100 miles.

You've got a pretty major city.

And so there's lots of light pollution.

When you come up north of Portland it starts dropping off pretty quickly.

You get north of Bangor and and it just gets dark.

And this really is the darkest spot east of the Mississippi River.

So when you go out, it's very hard to find these conditions on the east coast, east of the Mississippi, due to development and, urbanization.

So here in northwestern Maine, that is the spot where you can still go out and see the dark skies and see the Milky Way, and, and be able to experience what it would look like without, some of the light pollution you might find in your more suburban or urban areas.

See the two stars, they're really close together?

They go around each other.

The Appalachian Mountain Club hosts a series of events where the dark sky shines.

The dark sky movement has been about preserving these dark areas that are left.

And we knew we have quality dark skies above our property.

And we want to take the extra step to, you know, promote both, promote it, for educational purposes and then also and for people to come visit it and come see it.

And we also wanted to take the opportunity to protect it, to keep that dark sky quality above our, our property.

And in this area.

It's another thing that we can celebrate and we can invite people here to see.

And I think the really neat thing about, you know, a dark sky is that, you know, and so many of our conservation projects that we work on, it's like an effort you're trying to get somewhere or restore a piece of land or, get it back to the way it was, maybe.

And with the dark sky, it's just you shut off the lights and you have the thing that you're conserving.

It's right there.

So inviting people to come here to this place, and enjoy is such a simple thing I think can be really restorative for people.

So we're starting to get glimpses of the Milky Way.

It's still kind of faint.

But you can see a lightness through here.

It looks like a thin cloud.

That's the Milky Way.

The dark skies are important for viewing the sky.

If you're an astronomy geek like myself or Shawn, who wants to see the Milky Way.

80% of the people in United States have never seen the Milky Way overhead because of light pollution.

So there's that aspect.

It's also good for our own personal health.

This is a giant cloud of hydrogen gas.

Which is what stars are made of.

I really enjoy sharing the night sky with people.

I think that's one of one of my passions and telling some of the the different stories and the way different cultures looked at the sky.

All people have used the sky for navigation, timekeeping, knowing when to plant and harvest their crops.

So I think it's something that sort of is universal among all humans.

And, we all sort of look to it as a sort of I think it's something larger than ourselves.

And there's a it's a very peaceful thing to look at the night sky.

How many of you were here last night?

Raise your hands.

I can't see it.

Never mind.

John and Shawn work as a tag team to help people who visit for the weekend learn about and enjoy the night sky.

I love cultural astronomy and have some of that.

But John is definitely, you know, a really advanced storyteller and has all these really incredible stories, and many different stories than I have.

The brighter one on the left is kind of orange, and the slightly fainter one, just to the right of it is blue, and together they're known as Albireo.

So we always have a good time and we do sort of play off of each other.

We give each other a pleasant ribbing here and there, tease each other a little bit which is fun too.

And I think it makes it fun for, for the visitors as well.

You know, it.

I think they see that that we're having fun and that makes them have a lot more fun and, and realize that we really want them to, to be engaged that way.

You want it to be fun and enjoyable and and not something that's, you know, just about the science or just about the dark.

It's really about having fun and and hopefully it makes it a special experience that they'll remember and take home with them.

You got it.

Smaller than Earth and Venus, bigger than Mercury.

And it's red.

You know why it's red?

Well, we were looking for a place to go stargazing and, actually, I chose this weekend because I knew there would be a new moon.

And then not only after that, I realized that there was actually a festival at the AMC.

So it was perfect.

Its flying across the sky like you see a goose or something flying.

This is a swan flying.

Yesterday when you were looking at the telescopes, Daddy showed me more constellations that I thought were there.

And it looked really cool because I never really looked at the night sky and seen so many things there.

Getting people to go out and see and be in awe and have that experience is so, important and so kind of just human to be able to go out and and see what nature should look like without kind of human interference.

That's part of what we really want to try and do, too, is give that human perspective that this is fun, you know, and looking at the night sky, yes, it's it's, you know, we're all part of the universe and it's a bigger part of us, but it's also a lot of fun.

When you look up at Orion in the winter sky, there are a lot more stories about winter stars for some reason.

Just to the right of Orion is a group of stars called the Seven Sisters.

And in today's world, where there's a lot of contention, I think the sky's is a very calming and peaceful thing.

And you're not necessarily thinking about some of those contentious issues.

It's more about, you know, getting back to peace, sort of using your imagination a little bit and thinking about those things that are bigger than, than yourself in some cases.

Can you see the two stars?

♪