Presenter:
Diane Turnshek
Lecturer, Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University

Virtual Café Sci: Are dark skies in our future?
Mon., Oct. 5
7–9 pm

The night sky has been getting 2% brighter each year. Light pollution is the excessive, obtrusive light at night that prevents us from living under a sky bright with stars. 80% of the people in the United States live in cities and can't see the Milky Way. Artificial light at night adversely affects human health, and the environment can produce unsafe glare and raises our carbon footprint by wasting energy. To help Pittsburgh officials select shielded, low temperature LEDs for the city's 40,000 streetlights, Carnegie Mellon University architect Steve Quick and Café Sci speaker Diane Turnshek are monitoring skyglow from below and making a high-resolution nighttime map of the whole city from above with drones and airplanes. Learn how innovative science and technology can reverse the steady creep of light pollution, so we can once again view star-filled, dark night skies.

About Diane Turnshek:
Diane Turnshek is a lecturer in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. She also runs the Astronomy Public Lecture Series at Allegheny Observatory and coordinates outreach through PghConstellation.com. She’s taught astronomy at seven local schools, beginning in 1981, and has been a presenter at the Buhl Planetarium. She gave a light pollution TEDxPittsburgh talk, curated a series of space art galleries, founded IDAPgh.org, the local chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), and was presented with a Dark-sky Defender Award. With Chloe Nightingale, she edited the Parsec Ink 2019 anthology Triangulation: Dark Skies, containing twenty-one science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories about light pollution. Reach out to her on Twitter: @dianeturnshek   

About our Virtual Café Sci:
The event is FREE to attend, but preregistration is required! Once you sign up, you’ll get an email confirmation with instructions on how to enter the event. Have a question for Diane? You’ll be able to type your questions in the Q&A section during the presentation!