Big Cypress Preserve Celebrates 10 Years of Dark Skies

Most people who travel to the Everglades expect to see the swamp, alligators, and mosquitoes, but out in Big Cypress, you can also see the universe. 

November 7 marked the 10th anniversary of the Big Cypress National Preserve officially receiving its international dark sky designation. The title was awarded by DarkSky International, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting natural land from light pollution and preserving the night sky, Big Cypress being one of the few places in Florida that allows for unaided viewing of the Milky Way.

The anniversary celebration gave visitors a chance to enjoy guided stargazing with professionals at the Nathaniel P. Reed Visitor Center, along with presentations on weather and physics and how they affect stargazing and the cosmos. Speakers included NASA Physicist Weiping Yu, Astrophotographer Anthony Sleiman, Space Systems Engineer Carlos Ramos, and Meteorologist Rob Duns.

The sixth-grade class at Everglades City School also had several artworks featured in a contest in the lobby of the visitor center auditorium, each with its own unique take on capturing Big Cypress and the concept of astronomy.

Rangers from the National Park Service, the South Florida Amateur Astronomers Association (SFAAA), and others were also present ahead of the night sky viewing, which traditionally draws over 200 visitors per event. The SFAAA had filters on their telescopes, which offered visitors a rare chance to see the sun up-close through a telescope, including arcs of energy - called solar prominences - across its surface.

William Leady, the contact officer for the NPS Southeast Region, emphasized Big Cypress’s importance as a dark sky area during the opening speech that kicked off the event.

“If you draw a line from Philadelphia to El Paso, everything east, we are sitting on the largest dark sky section of the United States in that area,” Leady said, noting how the night sky had been critically important to the Native Americans who once inhabited the land and the settlers who followed them.

“We’re here to take advantage of that. It’s important in so many ways; it’s important to our history.”

Diana Umpierre, an educator and partner with DarkSky International, spoke about the multi-year process of getting Big Cypress certified on Halloween of 2016, after beginning the application nearly four years earlier. It is the first preserve to qualify for dark sky status, and to meet the criteria, it had to replace and shield all the amber bulbs across the preserve’s 729,000 acres, along with taking monthly lighting readings across the region.

“This was a commitment that they were making for the long haul, that they were going to educate the public,” Umpierre said, adding that it was Big Cypress that had first gotten her interested in stargazing when she came to watch a meteor shower with her father there a number of years ago.

Joe Dermody, a member of SFAAA who takes a particular interest in tracking solar activity, said stargazing can be difficult in Florida because atmospheric moisture creates significant haze near the horizon. Despite that, he noted that Big Cypress was a valuable place to preserve for stargazing, and he often visited the area and supported local astronomy education initiatives.

Big Cypress is holding several other night sky programs throughout the winter and early spring seasons to commemorate the 10th anniversary, as well as to take advantage of the best weather for stargazing in the area. The other viewing days are scheduled for December 12 at 7:00 PM, January 9 at 7:00 PM, February 6 at 7:30 PM, and March 6 at 7:30 PM.