Media

Washington Post (2 December 2021)

12/3/2021

How ‘dark sky’ designations are giving communities new tourism appeal

“Dark sky designations are something reasonably within [communities’] ability to achieve that has real meaning in terms of environmental protection,” said John Barentine, principal consultant at Dark Sky Consulting. “In a world straining under the influence of climate change and other environmental problems, resilient ecosystems are key to healthy communities. Darker conditions on the ground than we see in many cities now would benefit urban wildlife and the biological connections in and near these places, increasing resiliency.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/dark-skies-designation-tourism-stargazing-astrotourism/2021/12/02/416b1466-4d43-11ec-b73b-a00d6e559a6e_story.html

Dark Sky Conversations podcast (2 December 2021)

12/2/2021

S02E04: Dr. John Barentine - Recovering Astronomer

Night Sky Tourist podcast (23 November 2021)

12/2/2021

Episode 28- Returning Darkness to the Night Sky with John Barentine

John Barentine is the founder of Dark Sky Consulting. He joins me in this episode to talk about returning the darkness to the night sky. John holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has worked for the National Solar Observatory, Apache Point Observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. He formerly worked as the Director of Public Policy for the International Dark Sky Association.

Sky and Telescope (12 October 2021)

12/2/2021

Pittsburgh Goes Dark: Could This New Dark-Sky Ordinance Begin A Trend?

Is this the beginning of the end for cheap blue LED lights used in public lighting? “It’s too soon to tell,” says John Barentine (now at Dark Sky Consulting), who was peripherally involved in the effort while employed at the International Dark-sky Association. “I think that has been in motion for a while now, and it has been driven by a combination of public rejection of those bluer LEDs in favor of warmer lights, and generally better affordability of those warmer LEDs.”

Read more: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/pittsburgh-goes-dark-could-this-new-dark-sky-ordinance-begin-a-trend/

New York Magazine (6 September 2021)

11/9/2021

Will Earth Run Out of Space for Space Junk?

They’re already so numerous that they outshine celestial objects astronomers tried to observe with telescopes. “We saw it coming, but we didn’t think that it would get here this fast,” said John Barentine, director of conservation at the International Dark-Sky Association.

Ever since the first 60 Starlink satellites were launched in May 2019, astronomers began dialogue with SpaceX, all the way up to their executive level. But as Barentine points out, the space company had done everything that was required of it under U.S. space law. “All their ducks were in a row, so there was nothing in our law that would prevent them from launching these satellites. They weren’t required to have any concern for astronomy, so to whatever extent they did, it was voluntary.

Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/will-earth-run-out-of-space-for-space-junk.html

Popular Science (13 July 2021)

7/16/2021

This Colorado community fought to save its darkness — and all that relies on it to thrive

When Smith and the rest of the Cliffs crew wanted to secure their sky status, they turned to the organization with the official stamp—the IDA—and employees like John Barentine, the IDA’s director of public policy. Barentine trained as an astronomer, and when he joined the group in 2013, he mostly thought of light pollution as something that disrupted those celestial studies. “It just did not register with me that it had these other effects that a broader swath of society might care about,” he says. Since Barentine came aboard, he’s learned why dark skies matter to people beyond those with big telescopes.

Read more: https://www.popsci.com/space/colorado-fights-light-pollution/

KNAU-FM (12 July 2021)

7/16/2021

Astronomers Worry As ‘Satellite Constellations’ Fill The Night Sky

This is the dilemma: how do you get desperately needed internet to rural areas while protecting the night sky? John Barentine of the International Dark Sky Association says there aren’t many rules to regulate space. "The core of this policy is from a time when the concern was who was going to get to the moon first, was it going to be the US or the Soviets?" he says, referring to the Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967, when only a few dozen satellites had been successfully launched into orbit.

The growing numbers of satellites, Barentine says, is "putting pressure on this need to more clearly define the roles and responsibilities with respect to managing that sense of orbital space as this commons that belongs to all of us."

Read more: https://www.knau.org/post/astronomers-worry-satellite-constellations-fill-night-sky

Reno Gazette-Journal (11 June 2021)

6/12/2021

SpaceX satellites soaring across the night sky have many wondering what they are

“Starlink is just one representative of a whole new class of what are being called satellite mega-constellations,” said Dr. John Barentine, the director of conservation of the International Dark-Sky Association. These mega-constellations are a group of satellites that fly together in some sort of formation.

“By the end of this decade there could be on the order of 100,000 functional satellites in orbit around the earth and that is more than a ten times increase in what there is now,” said Barentine.

Read more: https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2021/06/11/spacex-starlink-satellites-night-sky-lights/7643864002/

Smithsonian Air & Space (June 2021)

6/12/2021

Orbital Debris Creates a New Problem: Light Pollution

Satellites have long been a nuisance for astronomers, since they periodically photobomb long-exposure images, appearing as streaks of light. This new study, however, uses a model to estimate the overall impact of orbiting objects. Researchers found that, collectively, this reflected sunlight has the same effect as ground-based light pollution by making it “difficult to see faint astronomical objects by lowering the contrast between objects and the sky itself,” says astronomer John Barentine, one of the study’s authors. But what makes it more worrisome is its geographic reach.

Read more: https://www.airspacemag.com/space/bright-lights-big-problem-180977824/

NPR Here and Now (2 June 2021)

6/12/2021

SpaceX Satellites Are A Problem For Astronomers

John Barentine, director of conservation for the International Dark-Sky Association, started thinking about the implications of having hundreds or thousands of satellites up in the sky at the same time after the first Starlink launch in May of 2019.

“In the next 10 years, we expect that the number of satellites orbiting the Earth will increase by more than an order of magnitude,” he says. “The Starlink program alone represents about 30,000 objects compared to the roughly 4,000 or so satellites that are in orbit around the Earth right now.”

Read more: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/06/02/spacex-satellites-astronomy