This is what I have been up to the last few weeks... this is a "Dark Sky Week' as declared by mayoral (and county executive) proclamation.
So I have Dane County itself along with the cities of Madison, Sun Prairie, Middleton, Verona and Fitchburg all proclaimed for this week... Just finished up a "Dying of the Light - We Hope!" custom planetarium program all about light pollution and had the news present. And made up a Dark Skies Bingo! (modified from an IDA version from years ago)
Thought you might like this project I am starting as well... Dane Skies Project... just gave a talk at the Madison Astronomical Society meeting last Friday on this... the intention is to do high res, high frequency sky quality data collecting so so to create a very high density (highest on the planet??) map of Dane County both as a baseline and then as the sky quality evolves so as to support the future application by Madison, WI for Dark-Sky Community recognition from the IDA.
Also, NITARP was the best professional development I have been fortunate enough to experience, by FAR! Part of that experience was getting to experience the AAS meetings and thus see how the real-world researchers collaborate and communicate with each other. It was fascinating and enriching. As a result of those conferences I joined the AAS as a member. I began to receive the regular postings. In this last year it was dawned on me, in a way that is very similar to what happened during the NITARP research experience, that I am one of "those" people. NITARP allowed me to discover my inner researcher and now the AAS Education blog is liberating me to share the gems that I have developed for my students. This is my guest post for the AAS Education blog:
https://aas.org/posts/news/2023/04/drawing-history
