ENST Brown Bag: Dark Skies and Sense of Place

The Environmental Studies Program welcomes Professor Jeff Bary for the first brown bag of the semester. Bary is Colgate's Sweet Family Chair and Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

The global movement to preserve humanity's connection to the night sky grows larger every year as the spread of excessive artificial light at night threatens darkness in even the most rural places. In this talk, Bary will share our multidisciplinary work to raise awareness of the influence of a night sky on the construction of one's sense of place in rural places like Madison and surrounding counties in Central New York. Bary will discuss the development of a major initiative to survey the skies above the 469-mile-long Blue Ridge Parkway that connects Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks in the Central and Southern Appalachian Mountains. In addition, this work includes measuring sky brightness and performing a lighting inventory on Colgate's campus. Bary will also share concrete actions each of us can take on campus and in our home communities to reduce light pollution and its many negative effects on people and our environment.

Hamilton Whole Foods will cater vegetarian wraps. Please bring your own reusable water bottle.