Alan Moeck has been an amateur astronomer since 1958. Since then he has watched the night sky deteriorate from light pollution.

"The sky is that bad. There is so much lighting that's developed over the decades and the people just don't realize it if I ask them if they had looked at the stars and most of them don't even realize there are stars up there anymore.....and that's sad," says Moeck.

Moeck has been participating in a two-week project called Globe At Night.

It is a campaign around the world where people observe and record the magnitude of visible stars as a means of measuring light pollution.

With a sky quality meter, Moeck measured the sky at Long Branch in Clarke county with a reading of 20.4. The higher the number, the less light pollution there is.

"As I came back to Winchester, the numbers came all the way down to 17 which is pretty poor, pretty bright skies, so you're not seeing many stars unfortunately at that point," explains Moeck.

After looking at the night sky, you have to match how many stars you could see to one of eight magnitudes provided by Globe At Night. Then enter your observations with the local time, cloud cover, and latitude longitude.

The data is entered on-line so scientists have access to it and light pollution can be determined world-wide.

Moeck says he wants to be able to see the wonders of the night sky and in order to do so, lighting needs to be utilized more practically.

"It's getting good lighting, proper fixtures for lighting, etc. and eliminating the waste, as well as trying to get back our Mother Nature's grand skies that we can actually get and use," says Moeck.

Globe At Night data has been recorded since March 3 and will continue until March 16.

Participants are asked to look at the sky between 7 p.m. - 10 p.m. local time and allow 10 minutes for the eyes to adapt to the dark.

More information can be found at www.globeatnight.org