A lot of you may have noticed the constellation Orion clearly visible in our skies of late (weather permitting, of course), and you might be interested to know that it is being used for a science/awareness project through early next week, one that you can participate in if you'd like.
It is focused on light pollution, the amount of light from the earth's surface that is directed up into the sky, which acts to reduce the contrast between the night sky and fainter stars and makes it more difficult to see objects in the heavens.
The idea in the project is to count the visible stars in the area surrounding Orion (or a couple of other constellations depending on your location and the ones you can most readily identify), and then relate that number to an image of the sky that quantifies the magnitude of the faintest stars that are visible in your area.
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