CHARLEMONT — The Charlemont Forum is continuing its 2025 speaker series with a presentation by Douglas Arion on light pollution, its impacts and how it can be mitigated.
Arion serves as executive director of Mountain of Stars, an astronomy and nature science educational organization based in New Hampshire, and is also a professor of physics and astronomy at Carthage College. His talk will be held Thursday, July 17, at 7 p.m. at the Charlemont Federated Church on Route 2, and a remote option is also available on Zoom.
“Why is the environment treated so poorly? Douglas Arion thinks that if people looked up and understood where we came from and where we fit in the universe, maybe, just maybe, we would become better stewards of the Earth,” said Charlemont Forum organizer Mary Ann Adams.
Adams said educating the public on what light pollution — the excessive or poor use of artificial outdoor light — is can be an essential step toward mitigating its impacts, which have grown since astronomers first noticed light pollution in the early 20th century.
“There are very few places not impacted,” Arion said in a webinar on light pollution that is posted on the Mountain of Stars website. “The astronomy community represents the canary in the coal mine. … If you can’t see the stars, the problem isn’t that you can’t see the stars; the problem is that something is blocking them.”
The presentation is expected to last 45 minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer segment. Arion’s talk will be the second-to-last presentation in the 2025 Charlemont Forum speaker series. On Sept. 18, the forum will host a panel of local food production and distribution experts to discuss local food systems and the future of farm-fresh food in New England.
The event is free to attend and sponsored by the Amherst, Buckland, Charlemont/Hawley, Colrain, Conway, Goshen, Heath, Leyden, Plainfield, Rowe and Shelburne cultural councils.
For more information, visit charlemontforum.org.
Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.
