Popular Science (13 July 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/