Education

Urban Night Sky Project

Materials for educators

PLANNING NSW

Under the Planning NSW portal the following resources are available:

Environment and heritage 
Dark sky
Dark Sky Planning Guideline
Dark sky education
Dark sky video series

The dark sky education units are a face to face, one term, cross curriculum package now available for all Stage 3 and Stage 4 teachers.

During the unit students will:

  • learn of the impact of light pollution
  • understand the importance of maintaining the dark night sky, and
  • discover how to protect the night sky for the future.

The dark sky education unit is designed for delivery in a project-based learning format and is fully resourced and mapped to the NSW and Australian curriculum.

More for teachers

DarkSky Interntional resources

For children from 5 to 18 these resources are from DarkSky International. They can be tweeked such that they are suitable for teaching and learning purposes beyond their United States origin.

Wildlife Workbooks
Games and activities about wildlife and light pollution.

For adult learners

by DarkSky International – Select from HERE

Playlist: 44 videos

The videos on this playlist cover many different aspects of light pollution. Light pollution effects wildlife, such as sea turtles, birds, bats and many others. It is also detrimental to the health and safety of humans. The following videos will show you what how light pollution effects our lives and skies, as well as what you can do to help!

University level

Dark Sky StudiesUniversity of Melbourne

Light pollution is one of the fastest growing challenges in modern society, rapidly erasing our view of the stars, negatively impacting astronomical heritage and astrophysics research, and damaging the health and behaviour of humans and wildlife, with further consequences on tourism and economics.

The challenge of slowing the growth of artificial light and reducing light pollution for the benefit of society and the environment falls primarily on urban planning and landscape design through engineering solutions and policy implementation. Students will engage in practice-based workshops and fieldwork with real-world results. This subject is joint between the School of Physics, the School of Biosciences, and the Melbourne School of Design, with additional contributions from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Photo credit: University of Melbourne.