Sept. 26, 2007 — Certain bright stars are about to get ogled by thousands of eyes in the first-ever autumn global star count set for the first two weeks of October. The Great World Wide Star Count is designed to use the peepers of any willing human on the planet to observe one of two constellations and help monitor how well the cosmos can be seen from their neighborhoods.
"This program is open to anyone of any age that wants to participate," said Dennis Ward, one of the star count organizers at its sponsoring agency, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
What participants need is a copy of the instructions, found on the Internet, and average eyesight. A local topographic map or a handheld GPS system is also handy, since every observation that’s reported needs to be carefully mapped.
The basic idea of the star count is that by comparing local naked-eye observations of how many stars are visible in the constellations Cygnus or Sagittarius with seven magnitude charts that show greater and greater numbers of stars in darker and darker skies, Ward and his colleagues can begin to quantify how artificial lighting is affecting the view of the stars.
"We really are losing our dark skies," said Terry Mann, president of the Astronomical League. The Star Count, as well as its two-year-old springtime equivalent, GLOBE at Night which uses the constellation Orion, help measure the effects of light pollution, as well as simply make more people aware of the problem, she said.
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"In October parents can take the kids out and learn about astronomy and learn how dark their backyard is," Mann told Discovery News. Then they can drive out of town and compare to a dark sky. Kids could even make it a school project, she suggests.
