We are so excited to welcome Diane Turnshek, our Guest Speaker for September’s theme: Space.

Our next Sunday Assembly is this Sunday, September 18, 2022, at 10:00a. This will be a hybrid event, with an in-person, community celebration happening at our space at Wilkins School Community Center (lower level), or via Zoom (registration at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtf-ytrD0qG9BazCf_iQy4AJ5R5bCfWJkX. Hope to see you there!

Now, let’s meet our Guest Speaker!

Diane Turnshek is a lecturer in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. She runs the Astronomy Public Lecture Series at Allegheny Observatory. Her love of both astronomy and science fiction led her to crew the Mars Desert Research Station (featured in the documentary “Above and Below”), where she turned her attention to dark sky advocacy and earned an International Dark Sky Association’s Defender Award. She has given over one hundred light pollution talks including one for TEDxPittsburgh, curated a series of space art galleries, and founded the Pennsylvania Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association. In 2019, she edited the genre anthology Triangulation: Dark Skies with twenty-one starry night short stories. She has been interviewed by the New York Times, PBSNewsHour, NPR Morning Edition, Canada One Radio, Chinese Global Television Network and 50 more news outlets. She hosted a Dark Skies Conference at CMU and is co-running the 9th International Artificial Light at Night Conference in Calgary, Canada in August of 2023. Her research focuses on measuring the light of cities with drones, aircraft, satellites and astronauts aboard the ISS.