Overview

This book takes a close look at our relationship with the sky, the stars, light, and darkness. In particular, it examines how light pollution has interfered with the culture of astronomy and our ability to appreciate this essential facet of our natural world. The sky has always held significance for humanity, in both cultural and scientific terms. And yet we persistently pollute it with sometimes unnecessary light in our obsessive desire to chase away the darkness. This effectively switches off the stars, hampering our ability to enjoy one of the most inspiring sights nature has to offer to humankind. In addition, too much light is hazardous to both our health and that of the fauna and flora of this planet. Saving the Starry Night also features a comprehensive look at the current controversy regarding efforts to expand internet access through the launch into low Earth orbits of thousands of new satellites, which will pollute the night with moving lights while filling to saturation the capability of the circumterrestrial space. This conflict does not mean that the interests of astronomy and those of space technology have to be at odds, and potential compromises are explored between the satellite initiative and the desire to maintain a dark, radio silent sky.

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Patrizia Caraveo is an award-winning author of several popular science books and a multiple prize-winning research scientist. She is a recipient of the 2021 Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society awarded for her remarkable contributions to the study of the Universe with different observables and techniques. She is research director at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and works at the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica in Milan, Italy, where she was director from 2011 to 2017. As a professor of astronomy at the University of Pavia in 2009, she won the Premio Nazionale Presidente della Repubblica. She was also co-winner of the Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2007, 2011, and 2012. In 2014, she received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Women in Aerospace European Society and was included by Thomson Reuters in the list of Highly Cited Researchers for Space Science. In 2017, she was awarded the title of Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. Christine Williams is a singer and actor based in Ashland, Oregon. Her performance credits include productions at regional theaters and on concert stages across the country and around the world, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Barbican Centre in London to the Aspen Music Festival and the Grotowski Institute in Poland.

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