Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it: Look up inthe sky after dark and count the stars you see.
As part of a worldwide push to gauge how much light pollution isout there, a scientific organization is asking people to look forspecific constellations during the next two weeks and shareobservations on the Internet.
You probably won't be able to see the Milky Way from your Tri-City area backyard, experts say -- but this area is still better offthan some when it comes to the artificial lighting that illuminatesthe sky and interferes with stargazing.
The stargazing effort, dubbed the Great World Wide Star Count, isopen to anyone who has access to a computer andthe World Wide Web.And while scientists hope it will help them map light pollution on aglobal scale, they do have another motive.
"We want people to go outside and look up, to appreciate thenight sky," said Dennis Ward, an educational technologist andastronomer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Researchin Boulder, Colo. The consortium of universities is organizing theevent along with planetariums and scientific societies across thecountry.
Under perfect conditions -- no moon, a clear sky and minimallight pollution -- a stargazer should be able to see as many as14,000 stars, Ward said. But in many major cities, where used carlots, shopping malls and football stadiums illuminate the night,often fewer than 150 are visible.
"It's pretty bad," said Ben Burress, staff astronomer at ChabotSpace & Science Center in Oakland. "People who live in cities tendto not think about the nighttime sky very much because they can'tsee it very well," he said. "You can't just walk outside and seesomething really enthralling."
That's a shame -- and probably a major deterrent to kidsdeveloping an interest in the sciences these days, said Bob Gent,president of the board of directors of the International Dark-SkyAssociation in Tucson, Ariz. When Gent was a young boy growing up inPhoenix, he could view a sky filled with thousands of objects,including his favorite, the Milky Way.
Seeing the constellations made him curious about the universe andour solar system, and instilled in him a respect for the outdoors.
"I became an astronomer for life by the time I was 5 years old,"he said. "But now we've lost the heritage of dark skies in these bigcities."
Light pollution has become a growing problem around the globe,fueled by urban sprawl and a growing population. Satellite imagesshow much of the U.S. eastern seaboard is socked in by lightpollution, as well as most large cities across the rest of thecountry.
Among the problems caused by light pollution: Bright lights haveinterrupted the migratory patterns of birds and disoriented babymarine turtles. As a result, dozens of communities across thecountry have begun to enact ordinances aimed at reducing the glare.
"It's not just astronomy impacted," Gent said. "It's a wildlifeissue. It's the loss of the inspiration of the night sky. It's allthose -- while we're wasting energy."
When it comes to lighting, many city governments and privatecorporations have kept safety issues -- and good business --squarely in mind, opting to keep streets, parking lots and storedisplays well-lit.
While dark-sky advocates aren't calling for blackened cityscapes,they do point out that some lighting is purely ornamental andunnecessary -- think Las Vegas.
Despite the fact that the Bay Area has been densely populated fordecades, it wasn't that long ago that you could drive a little waysand get a magnificent view of the sky, said Marni Berendsen,education project coordinator for the San Francisco-basedAstronomical Society of the Pacific. During the early 1990s, forexample, Berendsen would go to Mount Diablo near Walnut Creek to seethe Milky Way.
No longer.
"As the years go by and more and more houses are built at thebase of the mountain," she said, "we're really starting to lose ourdark sky up there."
Organizers of the Great World Wide Star Count wish morecommunities would take steps to turn down the lights. If their eventbecomes an annual one as they envision, scientists will be able tocompare data from year to year and map the light-pollution changes.
They hope their event will raise awareness of the issue, whileshedding light on how poor the stargazing is from some urbancenters.
"That's one of our goals," Ward said, "to make people understandthere could be so much more."
Contact Julie Sevrens Lyons at 408-920-5989 orjlyons@mercurynews.com.
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