Hi, I’m Vicky Derksen

Although my kids didn’t grow up where they could see the Milky Way, I wanted them to learn their way around the night sky. I gathered twenty students in the community for naked-eye stargazing and astronomy classes and taught the constellations, the motions of the celestial bodies, and the phases of the moon. We created sundials and backyard compasses, sketched the night sky, and learned how to use a planisphere, or star wheel, to identify the constellations.

When guests came to my house to visit, we’d end the evening with stargazing. I’d set up my telescope and aim my green laser pointer at objects in the sky. I’ll always remember the gasps of amazement when people saw the rings of Saturn with their own eyes for the first time. Or the child-like wonder that came over them as I recounted ancient star stories about Pleiades, Orion, and Sagittarius. One woman cried when she saw our moon through a telescope for the first time.

A friend revealed to me that she had a lifelong fear of looking up at the sky, which I later learned is called casadastraphobia. But she wanted to experience stargazing with her kids who were taking my class. So she forced herself to learn the constellations and track the phases of the moon with her kids. By the end of the year, she had fallen in love with the dark and bonded with her kids in a new way.

All of those experiences of growing up with the Milky Way, exposure to light pollution, and helping others discover the night sky led to my involvement in dark sky preservation.