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Dr. Constance Walker talks about the Globe at night Project.
Globe at Night: An International Citizen-Science Program to Measure Night-Sky Brightness. Involvement, Outcomes and Sustainability ( pdf )
Dr Constance E. Walker (U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory [NOAO]), Steve Pompea (NOAO), David Smith (UCAR), Tom Baker (ESRI), David Orellana (CTIO), Hugo Ochoa (CTIO) and Kim Patten (IDA))
GLOBE at Night is an international citizen-science event encouraging everyone to measure local levels of light pollution and contribute the observations online to a world map. This program is a centerpiece of the Dark Skies Awareness Global Cornerstone Project for the International Year of Astronomy. Its goal is to raise public awareness of the impact of artificial lighting on local environments by getting people involved. Data collection and online reporting is simple and user-friendly. During a 2-week campaign in each spring, citizenscientists take data on light pollution levels by comparing observations with stellar maps of limiting magnitudes toward the constellation, Orion. For more precise measurements, citizen-scientists use digital sky brightness meters. During the campaign period over the last 4 years, 35,000 measurements from 100 countries have been logged. The collected data is available online in a variety of formats and for comparison with data from previous years. We will discuss how the data has been used, provide information to become community advocates, and mention future plans for analysis with other data sets. We will also discuss lessons learned, best practices and plans during the next campaign. For more information, visit http://www.globe.gov/GaN/.

Globe at Night from cadelor on Vimeo.