GLOBE at Night
This year marks a monumental shift in human history when more than half the people on Earth are expected to be living in cities. Because of the ambient light of urban landscapes, many city dwellers have never seen a sky full of stars.
Over the past two weeks, my students have been involved with an international effort to map light pollution. The GLOBE at Night Campaign ran this year from 25 February - 8 March. Last year over 8,491 observations were reported, My students contributing about 25 to the database.
This is a picture we took and image processed with GIMP to enhance the image, identify the red skyline and ugly light pollution from the city of Melbourne, 30 km away. We used Google Earth to determine our Lat Long and geotag the images.
Our school is also getting behind Earth Hour. As a colleague has suggested, perhaps the students could compare the stars seen during Earth Hour 2008 (8pm March 29th) and then compare them 24 hours later? We are trying to figure out how to turn down some of the waste lighting from our school during 29 March and convincing some nearby factories to do the same. Two of my students even found a school security light that had rotated on its axis and was pointing upwards. Tricky as it is in the middle of our first term break. At least the NSW government is providing some incentive Earth Hour funding.