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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.

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KNAU-FM (12 July 2021)

7/16/2021

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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."

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Popular Science (13 July 2021)

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

KNAU-FM (12 July 2021)

Astronomers Worry As ‘Satellite Constellations’ Fill The Night Sky

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