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For Immediate Release                For More Information, Contact:
                            Rob Burgess 207-721-1970

“Astronomers – Maine Middle Schools Team on Light Pollution Project”

CUMBERLAND, Maine

Southern Maine Astronomers announced that it will be undertaking a project to measure local light pollution with a dozen Maine Middle Schools, as part of the Globe At Night program, an international effort to measure light pollution on a worldwide basis.  Students will gather under nighttime skies to count stars in the constellation Orion as a way to measure the extent of local light pollution and then will report their results via the internet to the Globe At Night website.

“We are extremely excited about this project,” said Paul Howell, President of SMA.  “Through a classroom presentation and then an actual night under the stars, students will have a very unique experience of learning about light pollution and then measuring what they learned,” Howell said.

Globe at Night (http://www.globe.gov/GaN/index.html) is a project of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and several national and international partners providing hands-on primary and secondary school based science education about Earth and its environment.  According to Howell, SMA took the star counting idea and expanded it by adding a detailed classroom presentation about the deleterious effects of light pollution on humans and animals, and its inherent wastefulness, as well as a civic lesson on how light pollution is regulated at the local town level through zoning ordinances.  “We’ve got a multi-disciplinary project combining astronomy, environmental education and civics all rolled into one.  It’s a thing of beauty!” Howell said.

Classroom presentations will begin in late February and actual star counting will occur between February 25 and March 8.  By matching the number of stars that can be counted against star charts, students will be able to determine the “limiting magnitude” of the stars they can see, and hence the influence of local light pollution.  Participants from around the world will be counting stars in the same two-week period and then all results will be uploaded to the Globe at Night database.  Eventually a new worldwide map of light pollution will be created.  The constellation Orion was chosen because it can be seen from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

“We extend our sincere thanks to the Fisher Charitable Foundation of Portland, without whose help this project would not have been possible,” Howell said.

  SMA is a §501(c)(3) non-profit corporation dedicated to astronomical education, research and the fun of learning about the night sky.  For more information about the club, and directions to the meeting site, please visit www.southernmaineastronomers.org.