Dark Skies as a Universal Resource: Citizen Scientists Measuring Sky Brightness

Details Dark Skies as a Universal Resource: Citizen Scientists Measuring Sky Brightness Dark Skies as a Universal Resource: Citizen Scientists Measuring Sky Brightness

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufmed11d..02w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #ED11D-02

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

0800 Education, 0805 Elementary And Secondary Education, 0815 Informal Education, 1600 Global Change, 6600 Public Issues

Scientific paper

The international star-hunting event known as GLOBE at Night returned March 8-21, 2007 in two flavors: the classic GLOBE at Night activity incorporating unaided-eye observations which debuted last year, and a new effort to obtain precise measurements of urban dark skies using digital sky-brightness meters. Both flavors of the program were designed to aid in heightening the awareness about the impact of artificial lighting on local environments, and the ongoing loss of a dark night sky as a natural resource for much of the world's population. To make possible the digital GLOBE at Night program, NSF funded 135 low-cost, digital sky-quality meter (manufactured by Unihedron). With these, citizen-scientists took direct measurements of the integrated sky brightness across a wide swath of night sky. Along with related materials developed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the meters were distributed to citizen-scientists in 21 U.S. states plus Washington DC, and in 5 other countries, including Chile, where NOAO has a major observatory. The citizen- scientists were selected from teachers, their students, astronomers at mountain-top observatories, International Dark-Sky Association members and staff from 19 small science centers. Most sites had a coordinator, who instructed local educators in the proper use of the meters and develop a plan to share them as widely as possible during the 2-week window. The local teams pooled their data for regional analysis and in some cases shared the results with their schools and local policymakers. Building upon the worldwide participation sparked by the first GLOBE at Night campaign in March 2006, the observations this year approached 8500 (from 60 countries), 85% higher than the number from last year. The success of GLOBE at Night 2007 is a major step toward the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, when one goal is to make the digital data collection into a worldwide activity. In this presentation, we will outline the set-up for the digital part of the program, the outcome and the plans for the future. GLOBE at Night has been a collaboration between NOAO, the GLOBE program, the IDA, CADIAS and Windows to the Universe. NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The digital GLOBE at Night program described was supported by a grant to NOAO by the NSF.

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