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PLEASE POST (and participate!)

Can You See the Stars?

Join thousands of other students, families and citizen-scientists  
hunting for stars during February 25 through March 8, 2008. Take part  
in this international event called GLOBE at Night to observe the  
nighttime sky and learn more about light pollution around the world.

GLOBE at Night is an easy observation and reporting activity that  
takes approximately 15-30 minutes to complete. Citizen-scientists  
record the brightness of the night sky by matching its appearance  
toward the constellation Orion with 1 of 7 stellar maps of different  
limiting magnitude. They then submit measurements on-line at  
www.globe.gov/globeatnight/. Resulting maps of all observations are  
created and placed back on-line by the GLOBE at Night staff within  
the few weeks that follow.

The five easy star-hunting steps, for which more information is  
provided on-line, are:
1) Find your latitude and longitude.

2) Find Orion by going outside an hour after sunset (about 7-10pm  
local time)

3) Match your nighttime sky to one of our magnitude charts.

4) Report your observation on our website. (Observations can be made  
February 25 through March 8; you may report through March 15).

5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world.

In addition to the unaided-eye observations of Orion, the GLOBE at  
Night campaign offers Sky Quality Meters (SQM) users the opportunity  
to measure directly the integrated sky brightness.  SQM measurements  
by citizen-scientists can also be reported on the GLOBE at Night  
website to contribute to a global map of light pollution around the  
world.

Helpful and user-friendly ancillary materials such as a teacher  
packet and science standards, a family packet, and student games and  
information are provided on-line at www.globe.gov/globeatnight/.

You can also subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates and  
results of this campaign. Visit www.globe.gov/globeatnight/ and click  
on “subscribe” at the bottom of the webpage.

During the inaugural event in 2006 over 18,000 people from 96  
countries submitted 4600 observations, including data from every U.S.  
state. In 2007, the number of observations almost doubled! Help us  
exceed 10,000 observations in 2008!

GLOBE at Night is a collaboration between the National Optical  
Astronomy Observatory (www.noao.edu), The GLOBE Program  
(www.globe.gov), The International Dark-Sky Association  
(www.darksky.org), Centro de Apoyo a la Didactica de la Astronomia  
(www.ctio.noao.edu/AURA/CADIAS/), and Environmental Systems Research  
Institute, Inc (www.esri.com/k-12). GLOBE schools all over the world  
as well as science and nature centers and astronomy clubs (i.e.,  
programs with networks maintained by the Astronomical Society of the  
Pacifiic) are local leaders in GLOBE at Night efforts with citizen  
scientists.

The press release (and more information on SQMs) can be found at  
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr08/pr0803.html.

____________________________
Connie Walker, Ph.D.
Senior Science Education Specialist
Associate Scientist
NOAO
950 N. Cherry Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85719
520-318-8535
520-318-8451 (fax)
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