Help Map Our Dark Skies

By Nancy Atkinson - February 28, 2008 at 9:11 AM UTC | Observing
m_world_night-sky.jpg

Have you ever really seen the night sky -- a sky without any pollution from artificial light sources? Over half of Earth’s population lives in urban areas, and have probably never seen a rich, dark sky full of

millions

thousands of stars. Not only does light pollution make it harder for amateur and professional astronomers to observe the night sky, but it affects other living things as well. Birds and other animals that are nocturnal can become disoriented from constant artificial light.

You can help track how light-polluted our skies have become by participating in the

GLOBE at Night Program

. All you need to do is go outside and look for the constellation Orion and compare your view with sky charts provided by GLOBE and report your findings. The programs runs from now until March 8.

The

GLOBE website

provides you with information and links on how to find your latitude and longitude and how to find Orion. You then match your nighttime sky to one of their magnitude charts and report your observation. Then you can compare your observation to thousands around the world. Last year about 8,500 people participated in this event.

Phil

and

Emily

have already posted on this, but Universe Today is now joining in to help GLOBE have their night sky biggest event yet.

Also available from the GLOBE site are downloadable family activity packets and information for teachers, offered in several different languages. Take this opportunity share the wonders of the night sky with young children while helping to track light pollution. It will only take a few minutes.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com