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Chicago Teens as Light Pollution Researchers and Advocates
  • +3
  • Ken Walczak,
  • Kelly Borden,
  • Jesus Garcia,
  • Rosalía Lugo,
  • Cynthia Tarr,
  • Laura Trouille
Ken Walczak
Adler Planetarium

Corresponding Author:ken.walczak@gmail.com

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Kelly Borden
Adler Planetarium
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Jesus Garcia
Adler Planetarium
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Rosalía Lugo
Adler Planetarium
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Cynthia Tarr
Adler Planetarium
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Laura Trouille
Adler Planetarium
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Abstract

The Adler Planetarium’s Teen Programs engages hundreds of young people in authentic STEM experiences each year. Several of our programs focus on artificial light at night (ALAN), a critical environmental, health, ecological and astronomical issue. Our work in ALAN Community Advocacy and Education began in 2015 through Youth Organization for Lights Out (YOLO), a bilingual program in English and Spanish based in Chicago’s predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American Little Village neighborhood. YOLO program participants use tools to collect and analyze light pollution data, attend field trips to local and state dark sky sites, facilitate telescope viewing at the Adler and in their community, and develop prototype solutions and action plans to increase awareness of light pollution’s local effects in Chicago. Programs focused on Instrumentation and Research grew out of the Adler’s educational high-altitude ballooning program, Far Horizons. In 2018, Far Horizons astronomers and engineers began developing Mission NITELite (Night Imaging of Terrestrial Environments), a high altitude balloon-based light pollution mapping mission along with undergraduate interns. To complement NITELite, Far Horizons designed GONet (Ground Observing Network), a low-cost all-sky imaging system to measure sky quality at night as part of its Stratonauts teen program. In 2019, high school students helped design, test, and build 50 GONet units as a potential new standard for worldwide ALAN monitoring. In 2020, Adler teen interns are working with the Cook County Forest Preserves to quantify regional sky quality with GONets in support of an application for an Urban Night Sky Place designation from the International Dark-Sky Association. Reflecting the collaborative nature of science, teens in the Instrumentation and Research programs partner closely with peers in the Community Advocacy and Education programs, learning from one another’s perspective while undertaking joint projects.