The Great World Wide Star Count

The Great World Wide Star Count is an international citizen science event encouraging everyone, astronomers and non-astronomers alike, to measure their local light pollution and report their observations online. This project is designed to raise awareness about light pollution as well as encourage learning in astronomy. Utilizing the international networking capabilities of Windows to the Universe, Star Count has engaged over 31,000 individuals from 64 countries and all 7 continents in its first 3 years. Data collection and online reporting is designed to be simple and user-friendly for citizen scientists of all ages. The collected data is available online in a variety of formats for use by students, teachers and scientists worldwide to assess how the quality of the night sky varies around the world. This session will share our results and demonstrate how students and scientists worldwide can explore and analyze the results from 2007—2010. We will discuss how the project team planned and executed the project in such a way that non-astronomers were able to make valid and useful contributions.