Who We Are
Our History
The Ashe Dark Sky Coalition's only mission is to help make Jefferson and W. Jefferson an International Dark Sky Community. Our motivation is to improve all five determinants of health by helping people recognize what this darkest corner of the state has to offer and to provide an internationally worthy sense of purpose through mitigating the inappropriate use of artificial light at night (ALAN) aka light pollution (LP). We began as a small group of volunteer astronomers in 2025 and have set out to reach our objective by the year 2030. We hope you will join us in this pursuit to achieve a better outcome for our community!
"Light Pollution is defined as every form of artificial light in the wrong place at the wrong time which creates sky glow, glare, nuisance, and other relevant causes of environmental degradation including some properties of artificial light that emit non-environmentally friendly or inappropriate light (Falchi & Bará, 2023; Lyytimäki, 2015)."
Rodrigues, Á., & Loureiro, S. M. C. (2024). Exploring Community Self-efficacy to Light Pollution Mitigation in A Tourism Destination. Tourism Planning & Development, 21(6), 818-840. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2024.2332243
Support The Coalition
We are not accepting donations at this time. Once we get past the feasibility study, we will begin collecting donations for our effort. For now you may send us a letter of support to ashedarksky@gmail.com.