The Sundarban 
The summer season southern Milky Way over Reesor Lake in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, a Dark Sky Preserve Simplest July 28, 2017.
(Image credit ranking: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)
One among Saskatchewan’s dark-sky preserves is eager to receive tourists after indie-pop singer Chappell Roan mentioned the Canadian province in a song.
Roan’s “The Subway” debuted at Billboard No. 3 after its July 31 release. The song portrays a character so frustrated with urban reminders of a breakup that their solution is to “f—- this city; I’m moving to Saskatchewan.”
After the song’s release, interactions with Tourism Saskatchewan’s social media accounts soared 1,800% practically in a single day, the prairie province’s organization informed Canada’s The Globe and Mail. And Saskatchewan’s Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park hopes to capitalize on this chance thanks to a eminent single that Roan as soon as called a “campy, gay-girl song”: “Red Wine Supernova.”
The success of “The Subway” fell appropriate days earlier than the annual Saskatchewan Summer Star Party, which takes place this year at Cyprus Hills from Aug. 20 to 24. It be a peak moment for each the dark-sky observatory and dark-sky campground on role to welcome tourists, as part of a summer season-lengthy series of public programs and astronomy events.
The star party is “one of the largest gatherings of amateur astronomers in southwest Saskatchewan,” Patricia Armstrong, director of partnerships and administration for the Cypress Hills destination area, informed Space.com by e-mail.
Observers on the main subject at the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party in the dark sky preserve of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in late August 2019 in the deep twilight. (Image credit ranking: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Neighborhood via Getty Images)
Beginners’ astrophotography, a “star walk” and adolescence’ programming will all be available, as neatly as a taste of pupil science: Representatives from the College of Saskatchewan’s RADSAT-SK2 CubeSat shall be on role to explain the radiation and Earth-imaging research the mission carried out after launch in 2023.
Armstrong added she may per chance no longer imagine Roan mentioned Saskatchewan, which handiest has about a million of us living across a vast area roughly the scale of Texas: “Who’d thunk it?” Given the fast tourism season in Saskatchewan, officials are hoping to capitalize on the surge occasion for next year.
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Wine and supernova fanatics can pair their Cyprus Hills search the advice of with with a bottle of both haskap, cherry or rhubarb, available at the nearby Cypress Hills Winery, Armstrong instructed. Tourism Saskatchewan has also created a destination listing based on Roan’s track; they stated the character in “The Subway” may adore the remoteness of Grasslands National Park, for example, “to escape the chaos and noise of urban life.”
Roan has by no means carried out in Saskatchewan, but she promised to come by at the moment. “I can’t wait to go,” Roan said in a latest interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Tune. “I also just love that the capital is called Regina,” added the LGBTQ+ performer, who has featured drag queens as openers to her concert events.
“With incredible exposure like this worldwide, it’s certainly the talk of the province,” Armstrong added of Roan’s song, adding she expects travelers “will definitely find things they never expected in Saskatchewan.”
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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth’s reporting includes more than one exclusives with the White Home, leading world coverage about a misplaced-and-came upon space tomato on the International Space Station, witnessing 5 human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest e book, “Why Am I Taller?” (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.
