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Pushcart nomination

World Weaver Press has nominated “By the Light of the Stars” for this year’s Pushcart Prize!

Thank you to World Weaver Press for choosing this tale of Hawai’ian sea turtles, starlight and love as one of three nominees from their solarpunk antho Multispecies Cities.

Turtle
Source: LiveScience via ati

Starblinded: Guest post on WWP blog

World Weaver Press invited me to write a guest post about “By the Light of the Stars”, my story in their solarpunk anthology Multispecies Cities. I took the opportunity to write about nocturnal light pollution, known as skyglow, and its cost to humans and animals.

In January 1994, a 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook Los Angeles. The Northridge earthquake rumbled through at 4:30 AM, waking residents and taking out the power grid. People poured out of their homes and into the darkened streets. And some of them dialed 911, not about the earthquake, but about what they saw in the dark sky: a strange “giant, silvery cloud” arching over the stricken city.

That mysterious cloud? It was the Milky Way.

Head on over if you’d like to read more about how skyglow inspired this story. https://www.worldweaverpress.com/blog/starblinded

New story: By The Light of the Stars

I have a story out today in World Weaver Press‘s new solarpunk anthology, Multispecies Cities.

Multispecies Cities cover

N.R.M. Roshak’s “By the Light of the Stars” saturate[s] conservation crises in casual kindness.

Publishers Weekly
Continue reading “New story: By The Light of the Stars”

Free STEAM lessons

With so many families suddenly homeschooling, I made three free astronomy mini-lessons. They’re for kids 8-12, & they explore the number of stars in the sky and the vastness of the universe. If you live in the city & your kids can barely see the Milky Way at night, these lessons are for you.

Each lesson has a short reading and a STEAM activity. Total time about 30-60 mins per lesson, depending on the kid.

Please share, remix, reuse & enjoy. (CC-BY-4.0)

Stars, Skyglow, and You

This image of the Milky Way is by Bruno Gilli/ESO, http://www.eso.org/public/images/milkyway/

Skyglow and you

My young son was excited to make out the constellation of Orion for the first time this winter. Unfortunately for us, we live right downtown and can barely make it out, thanks to skyglow. The image above is a terrific side-by-side of Orion with and without the skyglow of Orem, UT. Here in Ottawa, Ontario, all we can see of Orion is the 7 brightest stars: the belt, shoulders and toes. I was inspired to write a short piece on skyglow for kids.