Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association Welcomes Gail Walker, Geoff Clayton, and John Barentine as Featured Guests for the January Science Speaker Series, “How Dark is Nantucket’s Night Sky?”

January 13, 2025

NANTUCKET, MA—The Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) announces that it will host Gail Walker, Geoff Clayton, and John Barentine, with moderator, Joanna Roche, as featured presenters for its January Science Speaker Series. Their presentation will take place on Wednesday, January 22 at 7pm via Zoom. This event is free to all.

 

“How Dark is Nantucket’s Night Sky?”

Join Gail Walker, founder of Nantucket Lights, Dr. Geoff Clayton, Interim Director of Astronomy at the MMA, and Dr. John Barentine, founder of Dark Sky Consulting, in a panel discussion moderated by the MMA’s Executive Director, Joanna Roche. Learn about the Nantucket Sky Quality Monitoring Project, a joint initiative of Nantucket Lights and the MMA launched in 2022 to collect ground-based measurements to determine how dark Nantucket's night sky is. The data collected to date establishes a baseline for assessing the effectiveness of efforts to mitigate light pollution going forward — and helps us understand how close we are to losing the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye. 

 

Nantucket Lights and the MMA will be explaining how this project works and plans going forward. John Barentine, retained to independently analyze the data collected so far, will discuss his findings and recommendations. 

 

Gail Walker is the founder and president of Nantucket Lights (https://nantucketlights.org), an all-volunteer, citizen advocacy group exclusively dedicated to preserving and protecting Nantucket’s nighttime environment and heritage of dark skies. A long-time summer resident of ‘Sconset, she began working on light pollution as a board member of the 'Sconset Civic Association following her retirement from the U.S. Department of Justice where she was a trial attorney for almost twenty years. In addition to leading Nantucket Lights, Walker serves on the Executive Committee of the Nantucket Civic League. 

 

Geoffrey Clayton received his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Toronto. He has worked for the Universities of Wisconsin and Colorado, as well as for NASA. He spent twenty-seven years as a professor at Louisiana State University. His association with the MMA goes back almost sixty years. He attended lectures and attended Open Nights at the MMA when he was a child visiting Nantucket. He still appreciates the dark skies of Nantucket now that he lives on the island full time. 

 

John Barentine is the Principal Consultant and Executive Officer at Dark Sky Consulting, LLC. He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin and previously held staff positions at the National Solar Observatory, Apache Point Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the International Dark-Sky Association. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). He serves on light pollution committees of the AAS, IES and IAU, and co-leads the Community Engagement section of the IAU Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference.

 

Pre-registration is required to attend Zoom. To register for Zoom, use the registration link below:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_--Lju9KeTGGrxRJ4Dzihzw



The Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902 to preserve the legacy of Nantucket native astronomer, naturalist, librarian, and educator, Maria Mitchell. After she discovered a comet in 1847, Mitchell’s international fame led to many achievements and awards, including an appointment as the first female professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Maria Mitchell believed in “learning by doing” and today that philosophy is reflected in the MMA’s mission statement, programs, research projects, and other activities. The Maria Mitchell Association operates two observatories, a natural science museum, an aquarium, a research center, and preserves the historic birthplace of Maria Mitchell. A wide variety of science and history-related programming is offered throughout the year for people of all ages


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For Immediate Release

January 13, 2025

Contact: Joanna Roche

jroche@mariamitchell.org

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Keep Calm and Bird On: October 2025

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“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.” -Edith Andrews

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 29, 2025
Sept. 25, 1854. . . . The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.  I think of two things when I read this. One is that Quakers believed in being industrious and not wasting time. The second point makes me think immediately of Holden Caulfield – The Catcher in the Rye if you don’t know that character’s name – and his various references and discussions to “phonys” as he refers to them though Maria’s mention here is not entirely in the same vain. A materially successful Quaker was one who was living “in the light,” as Quakers referred to it. Even if gifted with material wealth, Quakers still lived frugally and were a hard working group of people. As Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur noted, “Idleness is the most heinous sin that can be committed in Nantucket . . . for idleness is considered as another word for want and hunger.” If you were not productive and industrious, you would starve – and it would affect others in the community since isolated Nantucket acted as a corporate family economy – everyone was relying on one another for survival. While Maria is also not necessarily going to this depth of industrious it is a Quaker ethic that was strongly imbued in her. She certainly was a hard worked with numerous accomplishments to her name and many different projects completed even by 1854 at age thirty-six. And don’t forget October 1 st is the anniversary of Maria’s comet discovery – October 1, 1847. JNLF
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