July 17, 2025
Dark Skies: Astronomy and the Environment
Astronomers are the 'canaries in the coalmine' for a number of major environmental issues, including light pollution, climate change, space crowding, and polluting other bodies in space. What can we learn about these issues, and what can we do about them?
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Douglas Arion will present on light pollution, its harmful effects on humanity and nature, and how to mitigate them. His organization, called Mountain of Stars, creates and
delivers astronomy-based nature and environment programs and activities to the public hoping to change behaviors and motivate people to protect the natural environment.
The Speaker
Douglas Arion, PhD is the director of Mountains of Stars, a public science outreach and education program that engages the public with ‘environmental awareness from a cosmic perspective’, and is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy and Donald D. Hedberg Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Entrepreneurial Studies at Carthage College. He founded the college’s Griffin Observatory and led observing programs at Yerkes, Steward, and Kitt Peak National Observatories.
He co-founded Galileoscope to provide high quality, low cost telescopes for worldwide promotion of science education. Initially launched for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and the International Year of Light 2015, more than 270,000 are now in use in over 110 countries, and a new edition featuring solar filters for the upcoming eclipses is now available.
Arion led the effort to create the AMC Maine Woods International Dark Sky Park, which protects over 100,000 acres in Maine – the last substantial dark sky region in the eastern 2/3 of the US. He produced Defending the Dark, a documentary on dark skies in Maine that has been shown on PBS across the US and at several major film festivals.
He has conducted research in many fields, including the solar atmosphere, radiation effects on electronics and space systems, instrumentation development, and asteroid compositions.