Diane has been to Mars. That is, she crewed the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. It was there she turned her attention to Dark Sky advocacy. Diane is a lecturer in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. Lucky for Pittsburgh, Diane is helping to guide the city’s street light conversion to LED by, among other things, convincing astronauts aboard the ISS to take photos of Pittsburgh before, during, and after the conversion. Diane Turnshek bonus fun fact: the Dung Beetle uses the light of the Milky way to roll its little ball of dung in a straight line. Diane has earned an International Dark Sky Association’s Defender Award. She has given over one hundred light pollution talks including one for TEDxPittsburgh, curated a series of space art galleries, and founded the Pennsylvania Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association. In 2019, she edited the genre anthology Triangulation: Dark Skies with twenty-one starry night short stories. She has been interviewed by the New York Times, PBS News Hour, NPR Morning Edition, Canada One Radio, Chinese Global Television Network and 50 more news outlets. She hosted a Dark Skies Conference at CMU and is co-running the 9th International Artificial Light at Night Conference in Calgary, Canada in August of 2023. Her research focuses on measuring the light of cities with drones, aircraft, satellites and astronauts aboard the ISS. 

Highlights from this episode:

Light pollution is harmful. Buddy Stefanoff is working on it - to the tune of about 5 years ahead of anybody else. Buddy and Crossroads LED are conscious of light trespass, color temperature, and shielding and so, have taken their design and manufacturing to the next level. Buddy demonstrates to Michael and special guest host, Greg Ehrich, some of the thermal dissipating and zero glare designs. He just might be the only one doing this. Buddy Stefanoff is an entrepreneur, small business owner and the Vice President of Engineering for Crossroads LED. With over 20 plus years of experience and expertise in the development of advanced, LED based luminaires and dark-sky certified lighting platforms, Mr. Stefanoff is the driving force behind the company’s product line which has received numerous patents and awards, including the International Dark-Sky Association’s prestigious “Best Design and Technical Innovation Award”. Under Mr. Stefanoff’s direction and leadership, Crossroads LED has become the undisputed worldwide leader in the design and production of LED luminaires that reduce light pollution and sky glow. 

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." --Benjamin Franklin We think we’ve covered both bases in this episode. Jacqueline has written something worth reading, and The Lighting & Darkness Foundation and The Soft Lights Foundation are doing something worth writing about - or at least talking about. Michael and his new co-host, Mark Baker, chat with Jacqueline about our innate fear of the dark and it’s value to humanity and the environment. Jacqueline Yallop is the author of three novels and four works of creative non-fiction. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. She lives in West Wales where she teaches creative writing at Aberystwyth University. Jacqueline is an award-winning author of fiction and creative non-fiction, described as a ‘writer of rare fine judgement and delicacy’. Her latest book, Into the Dark, is out in November 2023 (London: Icon Books): it looks at darkness in all its forms, in science, literature, art, philosophy and history. Her novel, Obedience (London: Atlantic) was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Big Pig Little Pig (London: Figtree) a memoir, was Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her work has been translated into several languages. 

Highlights from this episode:

High Pressure Sodium might be the best street lights for our rods and cones, but LED is here to stay, so we’re going to have to figure it out. Noah talks with Michael and Mark about reports, studies, and solutions. He gives us some very interesting facts about cone cells in our eyes under yellow light, and why military bases and astronomers use red light to illuminate at night. But cities have gone and are going to blue light LED’s at night, and no one wants to admit to this mistake. Noah Sabatier is a photographer and lighting researcher that is dedicated to advocating for better outdoor lighting. Noah has spent the past 5 years living with a night shift sleep schedule, during this time he realized that the streetlights in his city were far from optimal - and recent changes had only made them worse. He has spent the past 2 years extensively reviewing scientific literature and technical documents alongside others advocating for better lighting. Noah is now working to raise awareness of common misconceptions that lead to bad lighting and the better practices needed to solve this problem.

See some of Noah's work on The Soft Lights Foundation website: https://www.softlights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/A-Multi-Field-Analysis-of-Street-Lighting-in-Grand-Rapids-Michigan.pdf

Highlights from the Darkness News are:
 - Updates From DarkSky International
 - Vision Charts
 - Highway Disco
 - Wasatch LDS Temple Update

This is John Barentine’s second appearance and we still haven’t exhausted the conversation. How do we solve the light pollution problem? John has some ideas. Use reason and science and, as is John’s mission, give people the transformational experience of the night sky. How do we help that happen? By implementing the existing knowledge and technology of the lighting industry that knows how to make that a reality NOW! John Barentine is the Principal Consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, LLC, and was formerly the Director of Public Policy for the International Dark-Sky Association. He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin, and previously held staff positions at the National Solar Observatory, Apache Point Observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Throughout his career, he has been involved in education and outreach efforts to help increase the public understanding of science. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. The asteroid (14505) Barentine is named in his honor. His interests outside of astronomy and light pollution research include history, art and architecture, politics, law and current events. 

Jin joins us from North Carolina where he is, along with earning his Ph.D, doing his best to reduce - or eliminate - bird-window collisions. In fact window collisions are mostly a daytime problem. The night time problem is light at night. This draws birds in and they then collide with any part of a building, or they die from exhaustion, confused and circling the light. Come on humanity, we can do better! Jin Bai is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology program at NCSU and studies the drivers of urban bird diversity. He has extensive experience designing, coordinating, and assisting citizen science projects, including organizing the Triangle Bird Count. Jin co-founded City Bird with a mission of documenting bird-window collisions and advocating for bird-friendly college campuses in the Triangle area of North Carolina. Additionally, Jin is a board member of the New Hope Audubon Society, a local non-profit chapter of the National Audubon Society covering Orange, Durham, and Chatham counties of NC, dedicated to local bird conservation. 

From the first faint signals from Sputnik in 1957 to an estimated half a million satellites orbiting the earth in 2030 - yeah, we were shocked too! The effects on earth based astronomy could be devastating. And then there are all the things that can go wrong, like collisions and the build up of aluminum and other particles in the high atmosphere from burned-up satellites. On the bright side, there is growing cooperation from satellite companies, in mitigating the reflective properties of satellites. Dr Tregloan-Reed completed his Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Keele, Staffordshire, UK and then went on to a two year postdoctoral research fellowship at NASA Ames Research center, California USA. In 2018, Dr Tregloan-Reed relocated to Northern Chile and his primary research is in exoplanets, specializing in exoplanets which orbit active host stars, to better understand how stellar activity can impact our ability to detect and characterize exoplanetary systems. Since the start of 2020 and after the launch of Darksat, SpaceX's first attempt to dim their satellites, Dr Tregloan-Reed has been leading an international network of telescopes in performing brightness measurements of satellite constellations such as Starlink, OneWeb, and Amazon Kuiper. This survey is collecting data to allow astronomers to develop mitigation software and to ascertain the impact of satellite constellations to the quality of the night sky and Astronomy.