Dark Sky Festival

Presenter: Dacher Keltner

Join Keynote Speaker, Dacher Keltner, for an inspiring Awe Walk in Grant Grove.

Discover the festival’s daytime hub of activity at the Sun Zone! Here you’ll find hands-on learning, solar telescope viewing and family-friendly activities.

Presenter: Jarred Donkersley
Safely observe the Sun through Hydrogen Alpha dedicated solar telescopes featuring the Sun’s dynamic “chromosphere”, showcasing active features like glowing, magnetic plasma loops, dark surface threads, sunspots larger than the planet Earth, and textured surface details that remain completely invisible through standard white-light solar filters. Bring your questions and your sunscreen and even try your hand at solar astrophotography with your smartphone. Led by Sky-Watcher USA using the Heliostar solar telescope.

Presenter: Dennis Martin
Galileo began to explore the cosmos in 1608. The first successful photograph of the Moon dates back to 1840. Today, a Smart Telescopes automatically locate and track deep-space objects and stream live color images to your smartphone. Discover how easy it is to explore the universe using an affordable all-in-one Smart Telescope! If Galileo were alive today, he would no doubt be astounded.

Presenter: Rod Guice
This session explores the counterintuitive physics of rotation, from planetary to galactic scales through hands-on STEM demonstrations. It also covers Dr. Milutin Milankovitch’s early-1900s discovery of irregularities in Earth’s rotation and orbit, a theory that revealed the astronomical cycles behind planetary glaciation and was later confirmed by ice core research.

Presenter: Jeremy Evans
Learn about light pollution, it’s effects on heath and wildlife, and the simple things we can all do to protect our night skies. Followed by a night sky tour of the darkest places in the western U.S. See photos and videos of the Milky Way, lunar rainbows, meteor showers, distant galaxies, comets, nebulas, and eclipses.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Join a ranger for a family-friendly Junior Ranger program to hear stories of the stars and create your own star story!

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Join this hands-on, interactive talk at sunset to learn how the nocturnal animals of Kings Canyon adapt to nighttime in the parks. Suitable for all ages.

Presenter: Hannah Roodenrijs
Join park wildlife staff for an evening walk exploring the bats of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Enjoy an educational presentation on local bat species and dark skies, then use acoustic devices to detect bats flying overhead in real time. This easy, one-hour program includes a 0.5-mile (0.8 km) walk. Please bring a flashlight or headlamp if available.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Learn which stars are visible from your own backyard, whether you live with the bright lights of a city or the darkness of the mountains.

Presenter: Jarred Donkersley
An introductory lecture and workshop open to anyone with a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Learn the basics of nightscape photography, how to plan an imaging session in the city or in dark skies, the tips, techniques, and tools that go into making great nightscape images, and leave with some new knowledge and your very own nightscape photo gallery. Led by Sky-Watcher USA using the Star Adventurer 2i.

Experience the magic of the night sky in Kings Canyon! The Central Valley Astronomers will host an evening in the Big Stump Picnic Area, where telescopes will open a window to galaxies, star clusters, and other deep-sky marvels. Knowledgeable astronomers will be there to share their expertise, answer questions, and help you discover the universe in a whole new way.

Hosted by The Central Valley Astronomers

Shuttle Info: Park at the Grant Grove Village parking area and ride the park shuttle to Big Stump Parking Lot. Shuttles will operate from 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Discover the important role bats play in the nighttime ecosystem of our parks. Learn how bats hunt, what they eat, the challenges they face (like white-nose syndrome) and some simple actions you can take to help protect bats in your own community.

Visit the Sequoia Parks Conservancy tent, the festival’s central hub for information, event schedules, and partner insights.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
For thousands of years, the night sky has captured humanity’s imagination. Join this program to explore how stars connect us through stories, science, and wonder.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Come learn about the unique habitats found on other planets and brainstorm what characteristics animals would need to survive in them.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Explore how night impacts plant and animal behavior, how darkness shelters Sequoia National Park, and how you can celebrate and protect one of Earth’s rarest resources.

Presenter: Sequoia Parks Conservancy
The night skies in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are among the darkest in California. Explore the wonders of the universe during this naked-eye astronomy program, where we will take you on a guided visual tour of the stars and constellations.

Join our showman extraordinaire on a death-defying journey to the planets. Travel from the sun-scorched surface of Mercury to the icy vastness of Pluto and beyond. Prepare to be subjected to the countless dangers and wonders of our Solar System on a breathtaking tour that reveals just how precious our home planet really is.

The Great Solar System Adventure has a 25-minute runtime and is recommended for ages 7 and up; all ages are welcome.

Patrons of any age require a ticket.

Visit the Sequoia Parks Conservancy tent, the festival’s central hub for information, event schedules, and partner insights.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Join a ranger for a family-friendly Junior Ranger program to hear stories of the stars and create your own star story!

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Join a ranger in exploring the connections and discoveries that keep us in awe of the important cultural and scientific resource that is our dark sky.

Presenter: Sequoia Parks Conservancy
Meet at Panoramic Point trailhead for an evening hike to Panoramic Point, where sweeping views of Kings Canyon set the stage for stargazing. At the overlook, enjoy a naked-eye astronomy program. For this half-mile hike consider bringing a headlamp and a light jacket.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Many animals use the night sky for navigation. Explore the ways that birds, moths, bats, insects and other animals rely on the stars and moon to find their way.

Discover the festival’s daytime hub of activity at the Sun Zone! Here you’ll find hands-on learning, solar telescope viewing and family-friendly activities.

Solar viewing presented by Riverside Astronomical Society

Presenter: Amy Oliver
As soon as the sun goes down, Earth’s nightclubs are open for business. Under a glittering disco ball of unfettered starlight, some of Earth’s most spectacular species of plants, animals, and insects come out to play. Take a pictorial journey through the parties playing out in darkness, and how we can all keep them open for years to come.

Presenter: Harshda Saxena (Caltech)
The universe began in a massive explosion called the Big Bang. About 300,000 years after this explosion, light was able to escape the hot soup of matter around it and formed the first snapshot of our universe. 13.8 billion years later, join astrophysicists and humanity on a tiny rock called the Earth as they use modern telescopes to study this first light to understand the amount of matter in the universe, from the most massive clusters of galaxies to everything in between.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Discover the important role bats play in our nighttime ecosystem of the parks. Learn how bats hunt, what they eat, the challenges they face (like white-nose syndrome), and some simple actions you can take to help protect bats in your own community.

Presenter: Dr. Alison Duck
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to discover roughly 100,000 exoplanets! This will be a deluge of planets compared to the roughly 6,000 currently known exoplanets, which orbit around stars other than the Sun. This presentation will discuss how Roman will detect these planets using the transit method estimate their sizes. Roman will allow researchers to probe exoplanets all the way past the center of the Milky Way and will find the most distant exoplanets ever discovered!

Presenter: Becky Williams (Caltech)
Asteroids are the fossils of planet formation, preserving key clues from the earliest days of the solar system. With over 1.5 million asteroids discovered so far, each one with a unique story to tell, there’s a wealth of information out there waiting to be uncovered. Come fly through the solar system with us as we visit our smallest neighbors in space to see what they can teach us about planet formation, the history of the solar system, and the origins of life.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Enjoy a hands-on experience to learn about the many nocturnal animals that call Sequoia and Kings Canyon home.

Presenter: Maggie Li (Caltech)
People have been studying the night sky for thousands of years. Sometimes, they would find something unexpected: a new point of light that would appear where no star had been seen before. Today, we know some of these to come from the explosive death of massive stars, or “supernovae”. In this talk, we’ll understand how studying stellar explosions has changed over time, from the observations made by ancient astronomers to the rise of powerful, modern telescopes. We will then look at the state of the field today and what strange explosions we are discovering now, from the faintest to the brightest, and from our cosmic neighborhood all the way to the furthest reaches of the universe.

Presenter: Delaney White (Caltech)
The phrase “empty” space often brings to mind a cold, dark vacuum. In reality, although the space between astronomical objects can be incredibly sparse, it is far from empty and quite diverse. From cold clouds of gas where stars are born to plasma heated to millions of degrees between galaxies, these diffuse environments vary tremendously and shape the objects within them. In this talk, we will explore the material between stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters and how astronomers observe something that is often nearly invisible.

Presenter: Caltech
A panel of astrophysicists from Caltech will field questions from the audience on all astronomy, physics, and space science topics. Join us and bring your burning questions about stars, galaxies, life in the universe, black holes, science fiction, and more. The panel will do its best to address every question.

Presenter: Hannah Roodenrijs
Join park wildlife staff for an evening walk exploring the bats of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Enjoy an educational presentation on local bat species and dark skies, then use acoustic devices to detect bats flying overhead in real time. This easy, one-hour program includes a 0.5-mile (0.8 km) walk. Please bring a flashlight or headlamp if available.

Keynote Speaker: Dacher Keltner
In this keynote, Dacher Keltner will unpack the emerging science of awe, from its evolutionary roots and cultural expressions to its measurable effects on the nervous system and its power to expand our sense of connection to something larger than ourselves. He’ll turn to “wild awe,” exploring how experiences in nature produce some of the most profound and restorative forms of awe, benefiting both mind and body. Along the way, Dacher will guide the audience through simple, practical awe exercises they can use to bring more wonder into everyday life.

Join us for the festival’s most anticipated event! Powerful telescopes will be set up at the Wuksachi Lodge back parking lot, giving you a chance to gaze at breathtaking astronomical objects. Expert astronomers will guide you to distant galaxies, star clusters, and other deep-sky wonders, answering your questions as the universe comes alive before your eyes.

Hosted by the Kern Astronomical Society

Shuttle Info: Park at the Lodgepole Campground parking area and ride the park shuttle to Wuksachi Lodge. Shuttles will operate from 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Join this hands-on, interactive talk at sunset to learn how the nocturnal animals of Kings Canyon adapt to nighttime in the parks. Suitable for all ages.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Learn which stars are visible from your own backyard, whether you live under bright city lights or the dark skies of the mountains.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
For thousands of years, the night sky has captured humanity’s imagination. Join this program to explore how wildlife has found its way into constellations and storytelling.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Without an inspirational dark canvas brimming with stars, Van Gogh may have never painted “Starry Night.” Learn about light pollution and how you can help protect natural night skies, critical to our shared human experience.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
Learn about bats and their nocturnal activity through a family-friendly craft.

Presenter: Hannah Roodenrijs
Join park wildlife staff for an evening walk exploring the bats of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Enjoy an educational presentation on local bat species and dark skies, then use acoustic devices to detect bats flying overhead in real time. This easy, one-hour program includes a 0.5-mile (0.8 km) walk. Please bring a flashlight or headlamp if available.

Presenter: NPS Ranger
This world sees two drastically different sides every day: night and day. How do wild animals fair with that change? What happens in between?

Discover the festival’s daytime hub of activity at the Sun Zone! Here you’ll find hands-on learning, solar telescope viewing and family-friendly booths.

Solar viewing presented by Dennis Miller and the Sequoia Parks Conservancy.

Presenter: Amy Oliver
As populations grow and technology changes, darkness is fading fast. But a growing field of science studying light pollution is rooting it out in both likely and unlikely places to determine what keeps skies dark, how its loss can be dialed back, and what the presence or absence of darkness means for the health and future of our world and our view into the universe.

Presenter: Dennis Martin
An affordable, all-in-one Smart Telescope and a smartphone are all you need to explore and photograph galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and more. Learn about common features, popular models and simple techniques you can use to get the best results. Best of all, you don’t need to know the night sky! These app-controlled devices suggest the best objects, then automatically locate, track, and capture and process images. They do all the work while you take all the credit. It’s astrophotography made easy!

Presenter: Jeremy Evans
Learn about light pollution, its effects on health and wildlife, and the simple things we can all do to protect our night skies. Followed by a night sky tour of the darkest places in the western U.S. See photos and videos of the Milky Way, lunar rainbows, meteor showers, distant galaxies, comets, nebulas, and eclipses.

Central Valley, this one’s for you!

Experience the magic of the night sky right in our own backyard at Lake Kaweah. The Tulare Astronomical Society invites you to join us in the Lemon Hill Parking Lot, where telescopes will open a window to distant galaxies, glowing star clusters, and deep-sky marvels. Knowledgeable local astronomers will be on hand to guide your journey through the cosmos.

Hosted by Tulare Astronomical Society

Jarred Donkersley is Sky-Watcher USA’s Marketing and Events Specialist. Hailing from the desert suburbs of Phoenix in northeast Mesa, Arizona and a Los Angeles resident since 2008, Jarred has been in the astronomy and astrophotography hobby since 2011 and the astronomy education and telescope industry since 2015 working for Celestron, SkiesAway, Griffith Observatory, AstroGear Today, and Sky-Watcher USA as well as working with partners in astronomy outreach such as Dark Sky International, Slooh, Astronomy Magazine, the Saturn Awards, the Planetary Society, NASA Social, the Getty Villa, the National Park Foundation, and official NPS dark sky festivals in Acadia, Joshua Tree, Badlands, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Death Valley National Parks.

Dr. Alison Duck is a postdoctoral researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Dr. Alison Duck, originally from Maryland’s rural and remote Eastern Shore, got her start studying exoplanets at the University of Maryland’s observatory where she received her B.S. in physics and astronomy. Her PhD, awarded by the Ohio State University in 2025, focused on understanding the underlying systematic uncertainties in exoplanets and their host stars. She is now leading a Nancy Grace Roman Science Cycle 1 proposal to create a catalog of the 100 million stars which Roman will observe to find exoplanets.

Jeremy Evans is a professional photographer, filmmaker, amateur astronomer and delegate for Dark Sky International. He lives full time in the Eastern Sierra enjoying endless photographic and dark sky opportunities. During the summer and fall months he spends his time backpacking in the High Sierra, preferably in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. when he’s not in the high country Jeremy offers astronomy programs in Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yosemite, and Death Valley National Parks.

Dacher Keltner is a UC Berkeley psychology professor and Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center, where he hosts the award-winning podcast The Science of Happiness. Dachner is an expert on the science of awe and human emotion. He is the author of nearly 300 scientific articles and several best-selling books, including AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. He has consulted for Apple, Pixar, Google, and the National Park Service. His research on awe played a key role in shaping the Wowsabouts, who filmed their pilot episode in Sequoia National Park.

Maggie Li is a PhD student at Caltech. She is interested in the most distant stellar explosions, how they might be different from those nearby, and what they might tell us about the conditions of the early Universe. She uses optical, infrared, and ultraviolet telescopes, both across the world and in space, to try to answer these questions.

Long captivated by the night sky, Dennis Martin began to pursue his desire to photograph celestial wonders that are millions of light-years away after a career as a radio broadcast engineer that spanned more than 40 years. Technologically adept but deterred by a carload of cumbersome equipment, his curiosity was piqued in a big way by the advent of the all-in-one Smart Telescope. Today, he shares his passion for astrophotography using state-of-the-art devices. When not exploring the cosmos, he enjoys amateur radio, model railroads, live musical theatre, history preservation and travel.

Amy C. Oliver, FRAS is the light pollution scientist and head of education and public outreach for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, a part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. An award-winning science communicator and dark sky advocate, Amy was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2021 for her work in light pollution science and dark skies preservation and education. She was recently named one of the global lighting industry’s Top 25 Most Influential People and has served as the Chair of the Tucson/Pima County Outdoor Lighting Code Committee since 2021, and is leading the code through its first major overhaul since its adoption in 2002. She previously served the astronomy community in public affairs and engagement roles at the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and Clark Planetarium, has conducted more than 1,000 public engagement interactions as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador since 2016, and was selected as a TEDx editors pick in 2024 for her talk, “Glowing Glowing Gone: What We Lose When We Turn Out the Lights.”

Harshda is currently a graduate student in Astrophysics at Caltech. She uses a combination of space and ground based telescopes across the entire light spectrum – from the radio to the X-rays, to study the most massive objects in the universe – galaxy clusters.

Delaney White is a graduate student in astrophysics at Caltech. Her research focuses on the large-scale structure of the universe, particularly the cosmic filaments and galaxy clusters that make up the cosmic web. She uses observations of these systems across multiple wavelengths to better understand the properties of matter on the largest scale in the universe as well as how it is distributed and evolves in these systems.

Becky Williams is a PhD student in Planetary Science at Caltech. She uses one of the world’s leading telescope facilities to study the largest asteroids in the solar system, unraveling the mystery of how the planets formed.