A call to arms... er, dark
Ask any random person what “light pollution” or means, and the odds of you getting a correct response from a non-astronomer is pretty slim. It just isn't on the radar of the average person. But placed into context, “ Do you know why you can't see the stars at night? ” or “ Does light shining into your window at night keep you from sleeping? ” then the response often changes significantly. People understand those concepts, but what they need is an incentive to change their own behavior. That is a huge challenge, but it is not impossible. How? Make...
Globe at Night and Online Classes
I started teaching online astronomy classes for the Community College of Aurora (Colorado) and Metropolitan State University of Denver more than 15 years ago. Teaching an observational science through the Internet can be a particular challenge because I have always felt the need for students to have some kind of real introduction to the night sky, rather than just textbook exercises. The loss of dark skies is not just a problem in big cities. Light pollution encroaches even on pristine wilderness areas. Here the lights of Wildernest, a vacation condominium community at the foot of Buffalo Mountain at Silverthorne, Colorado,...
Losing the Dark: A Video about Light Pollution
If you were going to make a video about light pollution and its effects on people, and it could only be five or six minutes long, what would you tell people? There are so many aspects to the issue of light pollution that it's very tough to pick out just a few facts to impress on viewers. That was the challenge a group of us faced as we set out to create our newly released 6.5-minute video called " Losing the Dark. " A frame from the title sequence of Losing the Dark. CREDIT: Loch Ness Productions. The project was...
A Story on the Founding of IDA
Unfortunately, most people today live in urban and suburban communities filled with light pollution. They have not experienced the dark skies that were found everywhere in the United States a generation ago. Unless someone has lived on a farm, gone to camp in the mountains or woods away from the city, or joined an astronomy club, he or she has no idea what constitutes a dark sky or what has been lost in the last generation. Light pollution is a pernicious evil that has crept up on us slowly. Older persons remember what it was like to see the stars...
The Adopt-A-Street Program
I first heard of GLOBE at Night when I literally bumped into its creator, Connie Walker. First I should tell you she is one of the friendliest and bubbliest people I have met. And if you ask her about GLOBE at Night she’ll tell you that it is a citizen science campaign (that means you, no matter who you are or what you do or how old you are, you are the scientist) that collects data on light pollution from around the world. Last year people in over 90 countries submitted over 16,000 observations. Unfortunately, my location was not an...
