Light pollution is the bane of amateur astronomers everywhere. The Globe at Night program is an international citizen-science campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by encouraging everyone everywhere to measure local levels of night sky brightness and contribute observations online to a world map. So here’s your opportunity to give them your help!
It’s pretty simple stuff. All you have to do is go outside and find the constellation of Leo (northern hemisphere observers) or Crux (southern hemisphere observers) between 8pm and 10pm local time. Then compare the brightness of the stars you can see with the magnitude charts provided by Globe at Night and report your results.
This is a simple project requiring no further ability than identifying two easily recognizable constellations, so anybody can take part.
The project has two valuable outcomes:
1. It shows people just how bad the skies are getting, which is important.
2. It also gets people to look up at the night sky. It’s surprising just how many people never look up!
And for teachers, this is a great learning opportunity for your students, too!
Globe at Night is running two campaigns, one for each hemisphere. Both campaigns are currently under way, with the one for the northern hemisphere running from March 22 to April 4, so there’s still plenty of time to get your observations in. The campaign for southern hemisphere observers runs from March 24 to April 6.
I only heard about this initiative today but at least there’s still time to make and submit your observations over the weekend!
Filed under: My Personal Astronomy Blog
