September 11-13, 2026

Sequoia Dark Sky Festival

We will be assisting with the Sequoia National Park Dark Sky Festival to take place Friday-Sunday September 11-13.

Friday, September 11

• Drive to Lodgepole Campground (~5 hours) in morning
  
• Specific Campsite Directions
  
• Set up camp
  
• Free time to hike around and explore
  

Saturday, September 12

• All the talks
  
  • 1pm - Harshda (Wuksachi)
  • 2pm - Becky (Wuksachi)
  • 3pm - Delaney (Wuksachi)
  • 3pm - Maggie (Beetle Rock)
• Q&A panel
  
• Star Party
  
• Hiking
  

Sunday, September 13

• Drive back home (~5 hours) in afternoon/evening
  

Presentations on Saturday at Wuksachi Lodge

Speaker: Harshda Saxena
Title: Unveiling the Secrets of our Universe from its First Light
Abstract: Our universe began in a massive explosion called the Big Bang. 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 me and some monkeys on a tiny rock called the Earth as we use modern telescopes to study this first light to understand the amount of matter in the universe to the most massive clusters of galaxies, and everything in between.
Bio: Harshda is currently a third year 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.

Speaker Becky Williams
Title: What Can Asteroids Teach Us About Our Solar System?
Abstract: 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.
Bio: Becky Williams is a rising 3rd year 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.

Speaker: Delaney White
Title: How empty is "empty" space?
Abstract: 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.
Bio: 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.

Speaker: Maggie Li
Title: Exploding Stars, Then and Now
Abstract: 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.
Bio: 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.