Problem: No budget for field trips, so how to bring real science into the lives of my students?

Solution: Globe at Night campaigns!

I teach 8th grade science at Pistor Middle School and this is the first year I have...

“Well, do you want to be a superhero or not?”

They were still waiting for my answer, and I was struggling mightily to come up with a reason to accept their proposal.

“Okay, so what superpowers do I have?” I asked.

“None.”

Maybe it was our anti-rain dance that did it.

For days, weather forecasts had predicted rain for Friday, April 5—the date of North Carolina’s first-ever Statewide Star Party. But the skies cleared just in time over virtually the entire state.

Mount Tai is located in Shandong Province in eastern China. It is called the "chieftain" among five famous mountains in China. Since the Qin Dynasty, more than 2,000 years ago, 13 emperors have gone to worship at Mount Tai; generations of officials and scholars have left inscriptions on the stone of the mountain. In 1987, UNESCO (United Nations Educational,...

Since you’re reading this blog post, the odds are you already know that there are serious problems with the way lighting is used in industrialized societies. The odds are also good that you’d like to do something about it. But what can any one individual accomplish, when lighting decisions are made by faceless corporations and impenetrable city bureaucracy?...

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

This quotation from C.S. Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces is one of my favorites and most accurately defines how I feel about IDA’s International...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In early December NASA released a new global map of our Earth at night. The new ‘Black Marble’ images show that our world isn’t so black. In fact, it is littered with light.

The...

I was having a Single-Serving Friend conversation on a plane ride (like in Fight Club, but not leading to such dire events) leaving Washington D.C. after a conference and it was getting heated. Naturally, having a habit of talking to everyone falling under my radar I had begun a conversation with the man next to me. He asked a common question of someone of my...

A word of warning: Beware of traveling with me in town at night. Maybe that isn’t the best way to introduce myself, but I felt the need to caution the reader. I have a nasty habit of pointing out bad lights.

As we journey together on this blog we are likely to encounter examples of bad lighting and I hope that you will...