GLOBE at Night 2008 Results a Solid Step Toward IYA 2009 (Forwarded)

Office of Public Affairs and Educational Outreach
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Tucson, Arizona

For More Information:
Douglas Isbell
Phone: (520) 318-8214

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, April 22, 2008

RELEASE NO: NOAO 08-05

GLOBE at Night 2008 Results a Solid Step Toward IYA 2009

The international star-hunting activity known as GLOBE at Night inspired
6,838 measurements of night-sky brightness by citizen scientists around
the world, including 660 digital measurements using handheld sky-quality
meters.

The third edition of GLOBE at Night was held from February 25-March 8,
with assistance from the educational outreach networks of the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific (ASP) to help spread the campaign to amateur
astronomers and science centers.

The 2008 campaign received measurements from 62 countries, surpassing last
year's total of 60 countries. Just over 4,800 of the measurements came
from the United States (with 48 states and the District of Columbia
reporting at least one measurement). Observers in Hungary submitted the
most measurements (380) from outside the U.S., followed by Romania, the
Czech Republic, Costa Rica, and Spain, all with over 100 observations;
Canada was next largest, with 95 measurements reported.

These basic numbers fall roughly midway between the 2007 and 2006 results
from GLOBE at Night, which may result from several factors.

"While we have just begun to analyze the data, we have strong anecdotal
evidence from our citizen-scientist network in North America that they
experienced abnormally cloudy skies this year," says Connie Walker, GLOBE
at Night project manager at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory
(NOAO) in Tucson, AZ. "The timing of the March new Moon this year -- which
is required to give everyone sufficiently dark skies to properly observe
the constellation Orion -- also fell further into summer vacation for our
partners in Chile and some other Southern Hemisphere countries, which made
it more difficult to attract large numbers of students."

The classic GLOBE at Night program directs students, families, and the
general public how to observe and record the number of stars visible in
the constellation Orion, as seen from different locations. Observers
report their results online by comparing their view of Orion with a set of
template images on the program's Web site, which shows the number of stars
in the constellation for a range of visibilities from bright skies to very
dark.

The digital version of GLOBE at Night takes advantage of low-cost digital
SQMs manufactured by Unihedron of Ontario, Canada, which can make a highly
repeatable direct measurement of integrated sky brightness.

Both the "classic" GLOBE at Night exercise that anyone can have fun doing
with their unaided eyes, and a digital effort to obtain precise
measurements of urban dark skies will be conducted again in March 2009, as
one of several start-hunting efforts connected to the "dark-skies
awareness" cornerstone program of the International Year of Astronomy
(IYA) 2009.

GLOBE at Night 2009 will occur in the latter half of March. These dates
should provide better conditions for schools in the Southern Hemisphere,
and will likely coincide with Earth Hour 2009 as well, Walker says.

A first-look at results from GLOBE at Night 2008 was presented by project
leaders who attended the March 2008 meeting of the National Science
Teachers Association in Boston. More detailed analysis of the GLOBE at
Night 2008 data will be presented at the May 31-June 4 annual meeting of
the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in St. Louis, to be held jointly
with the American Astronomical Society. The meeting's primary focus is
national and regional training and planning related to IYA 2009. See
www.astrosociety.org/events/meeting.html for more details.

For more information and access to the data sets, see the program's Web
page, or contact globeatnight @ globe.gov or outreach @ noao.edu.

Information about the emerging global plans for the IYA 2009 is available
at www.astronomy2009.org .

GLOBE at Night is a collaboration between The Global Learning and
Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program, Boulder, CO; the
National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, AZ; Centro de
Apoyo a la Didactica de la Astronomia (CADIAS) in Chile; Environmental
Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI); and the International Dark-Sky
Association (IDA).

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) consists of Kitt Peak
National Observatory near Tucson, AZ; Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory near La Serena, Chile; and, the NOAO Gemini Science Center,
the route for U.S. astronomers to observe with the Gemini North telescope
in Hawaii and the Gemini South telescope in Chile. NOAO is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA), under a
cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) is a
worldwide, hands-on, primary and secondary Earth science and education
program. GLOBE promotes and supports student-teacher-scientist
collaborations on inquiry-based investigations of Earth's environment. To
date, over 1 million students and 40,000 teachers from more than 100
countries have participated in GLOBE. GLOBE is funded by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), supported by the National
Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of State, and implemented
through a cooperative agreement between NASA, the University Corporation
for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colorado and Colorado State
University in Fort Collins, Colorado.

IMAGE CAPTION:
[Small resolution (88KB):
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr08/images/gan-2008-map-sm.jpg
Medium resolution (215KB)
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr08/images/gan-2008-map-med.jpg
Large resolution (834KB)
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr08/images/gan-2008-map.jpg]

GLOBE at Night 2008 Results Map. Image credit: GLOBE Program and
NOAO/AURA/NSF


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