Michael Weasner still remembers the view through his very first telescope—an early Christmas present his mother gave him in 1961. “I unboxed it, read the manual several times, looked at all of the pieces, started putting it together, and, of course it was cloudy that night,” he recalls. “But, once it did clear up—we're talking December in southern Indiana—I took it out in the yard and saw the Orion nebula which was a beautiful object.
Nearly 60 years later, Weasner would be honored with the Indiana University Bicentennial Medal for Astronomy Outreach in 2019. The IU alumnus enjoyed a storied career in the Air Force first as a jet fighter pilot and later as a fighter pilot instructor. “I totally fell in love with flying,” he says. “I'd be out flying at night—you're up there at 35,000 feet with a clear, glass canopy over your head—and the views of the night sky were awesome.”
He also worked on the Space Shuttle Program with the Air Force in conjunction with NASA and, later, held positions in the aerospace industry. “And it always was my plan, whenever I did retire, that I was going to have my own observatory with a nice telescope,” he says.
Weasner's love of astronomy eventually led him to devote much of his time to educating others about light pollution and the importance of dark night skies. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he regularly would visit area elementary and middle school students. He also invited groups to his Cassiopeia Observatory which he established in 2009.
“The harm that light pollution is causing is not just an aesthetic thing and it's not just an astronomy thing,” he explains. “We now know that there are all kinds of human health impacts. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease—they all seem to have connections to excessive artificial light at night.”
Wildlife and insects are negatively impacted by the dearth of darkness, too. “A person may say, 'My little 40-watt bulb in the backyard doesn't really matter all that much,” Weasner says. “But take that 40 watts [multiplied by] hundreds of millions of people, and then it starts adding up.”
For his part, the Oracle, Arizona resident also lead the effort to earn “International Dark Sky Park” status for the local Oracle State Park. (It was the first such designation in one of Arizona's state parks.) What's more, in 2015, the International Dark Sky Association named Weasner an International Dark Sky Association “Dark Sky Defender.” He would later go on to serve as the association's Dark Sky Committee Chair.
“There are reasons to get a handle on light pollution—and it's the easiest kind of pollution to get a handle on,” Weasner concludes. “Controlling air pollution and water pollution is much harder. But, with light pollution, as soon as you turn off the switches or shield the light so that it doesn't point up at the sky, the effect is immediate.”
