On Tuesday the annual Sci-Fest competition was held in Tallagh IT. All of the TYs had prepared projects to enter in the competition and I, allong with Saidhbh and Oriana, entered our project on light pollution. The title of our project was "Our Vanishing Night Sky: A Study of Light Pollution.
Light pollution is not often considered a serious issue by the Irish population, but it is in fact a major problem for society today. Due to the sky glow caused by excess artificial light used at night, we are now no longer able to see the milky way in many parts of the country. Light pollution also disrupts nocturnal animals' sleeping patterns and has been linked to breast cancer in female night-shift workers. For these reasons, we considered this a very valid issue to research. We wanted to look at the severity of light pollution in our local area and to also raise awareness about the issue. In order to do this, we decided to conduct a visual survey of the night sky through photography. We went out on two different nights and took photographs at seven locations, ranging from Dublin city centre to the Kildare countryside. We then processed the pictures on a computer programme called ImageJ. This programme created histograms of the amount of sky glow in each picture and from these we could then compare the severity of the light pollution in each location.
We ended up winning the "Discovering Space Award" at the competition and as a result the school will receive some equipment from the European Space Education Resource Office. We also won 30euro in One-For-All vouchers each. So it was overall a very fun and productive day!
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