Publication: Mercury News

UCLA Expert: Jules de la Cruz and Mahliya Purificacion: Undergraduate Students, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Travis Longcore: Associate Adjunct Professor; Co-Chair, Environmental Science and Engineering (D.Env.) Program, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Synopsis: Jules de la Cruz was studying environmental science at UCLA when she got an assignment to go to Idaho as a “light pollution ambassador.” She arrived with one other student, Mahliya Purificacion. Together, they got ready for their first mission.

UCLA News: Last summer, the program allowed an “astronomer-in-residence” to visit the Stanley area. It also led to the partnership with Longcore, which brought Purificacion and de la Cruz to the reserve as NASA “light pollution ambassadors” to study the sources of light pollution seeping in. Though de la Cruz had stared at numerous high-quality photographs of the Milky Way through her work studying light pollution in a UCLA lab, she was eager to know what it would feel like to stand under it herself. "That was kind of one of the selling points of preserving the night sky," she said. "There is the ecology aspect of it, the health aspect, but I think one of the biggest sellers is just the beauty of it."

Read more at NPR.