Abstract
The Adler Planetarium’s Teen Programs engages hundreds of young people
in authentic STEM experiences each year. Several of our programs focus
on artificial light at night (ALAN), a critical environmental, health,
ecological and astronomical issue. Our work in ALAN Community Advocacy
and Education began in 2015 through Youth Organization for Lights Out
(YOLO), a bilingual program in English and Spanish based in Chicago’s
predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American Little Village neighborhood.
YOLO program participants use tools to collect and analyze light
pollution data, attend field trips to local and state dark sky sites,
facilitate telescope viewing at the Adler and in their community, and
develop prototype solutions and action plans to increase awareness of
light pollution’s local effects in Chicago. Programs focused on
Instrumentation and Research grew out of the Adler’s educational
high-altitude ballooning program, Far Horizons. In 2018, Far Horizons
astronomers and engineers began developing Mission NITELite (Night
Imaging of Terrestrial Environments), a high altitude balloon-based
light pollution mapping mission along with undergraduate interns. To
complement NITELite, Far Horizons designed GONet (Ground Observing
Network), a low-cost all-sky imaging system to measure sky quality at
night as part of its Stratonauts teen program. In 2019, high school
students helped design, test, and build 50 GONet units as a potential
new standard for worldwide ALAN monitoring. In 2020, Adler teen interns
are working with the Cook County Forest Preserves to quantify regional
sky quality with GONets in support of an application for an Urban Night
Sky Place designation from the International Dark-Sky Association.
Reflecting the collaborative nature of science, teens in the
Instrumentation and Research programs partner closely with peers in the
Community Advocacy and Education programs, learning from one another’s
perspective while undertaking joint projects.