APARNA VENKATESAN

By Hannah Ongley

In 2023, cosmologist Aparna Venkatesan, from the University of San Francisco, and John C. Barentine, from Dark Sky Consulting, co-created the word noctalgia—meaning “sky grief.” It expresses the emotion that comes with losing our skies to light pollution. Sky grief has a poetic sting to it, a heartache that creeps into our collective subconscious. A year after its coining, there were two big legislative wins for dark sky activists and astronomers seeking to protect the night: The Outdoor Lighting Control Act was signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker, and the new European Union Nature Restoration Law came into effect.

Aparna has her eyes set far beyond the horizon, studying the first stars and quasars and contributing to various space policy projects. She is committed to pulling other voices into the conversation, too—particularly women and minorities underrepresented in STEM fields. “Curiosity and the drive to know, to understand the universe we live in, are human qualities,” she says. “They are not modern Western qualities. They belong to all of us.”

HANNAH ONGLEY: What sparked your curiosity in cosmology?

APARNA VENKASTESAN: My first love was math. I love how it’s a universal language for the cosmos. Human languages are beautiful, but communication can be messy. I find math to be such a profound, clean, fundamental way of communicating. Before moving to the US, I lived in very congested cities with little sky visibility and a lot of light pollution. But I always loved the stars. How math manifests in the stars is how I came to a love of astronomy.

HO: What led you to your work in dark sky advocacy?

AV: By the late 2010s, it became clear that we were losing the skies. That first train of Starlink satellites in May 2024 was a wake-up call—a preview of where orbital space was headed. Ground-based light pollution is still the dominant source of light pollution, but space-based light pollution, satellites, and other factors are catching up quickly. Many satellite companies have been good about partnering with astronomers, but that might change as more countries and space actors arrive on the world stage of space exploration.

Light pollution is bad for human health. It’s also bad for ecological health because systems adapt slowly over time. When plants and animals don’t get to sleep, it changes their migration. We think of light pollution as a local problem: Turn the lights off and talk to your municipality—which, by the way, is hugely important. [But] this is becoming a global problem because the movement of many ecosystems and creatures depends on darkness. I’ve been thinking about how much the migration of pollinators has impacted the food sovereignty of many communities, including Indigenous communities. It needs interdisciplinary advocacy, because it impacts everyone. The skies belong to us all.

HO: You mentioned this overwhelming sense of exhaustion post-pandemic. I wondered how the balance between grief and gratitude plays out in your life.

AV: Every decade brings ups and downs in one’s life, one’s body, one’s work. It feels like we’re living in especially crisis-filled times. Creating buffers and embracing intentional islands of joy is important. But we have so much going on in the world and in each of our lives; we need a larger container. We can’t always lift ourselves up by ourselves. I think the skies are that magical, larger container.

It’s easy to stay in bed in your pajamas with the covers pulled up. The antidote to that is not willpower or forced positivity, but awe and purpose. The skies and the night sky provide that in abundance. When nature can thrive and be resilient, we can thrive and be resilient.

HO: Did you expect noctalgia to strike a chord with so many people?

AV: It’s been the most humbling journey. It’s a portmanteau—part Greek, part Latin. It literally means “sky grief.” This word has really tapped into [the idea that] humanity is rapidly growing feelings of collective loss. Because of the accelerating impacts of climate change, many people are losing their homes or environments. What has really inspired me is that people are creating around it—writing, drawing, painting. They’re putting themselves into it, which is how things live. This Swedish atmospheric black metal band, Light Lorn, put out a noctalgia song, which is a lot of screaming. I often feel this way: screaming into the wind, trying to get policy change. There are even craft beers around noctalgia—companies saying things like, You need this dark handcrafted beer in your hand as you appreciate dark skies with your loved ones and ponder your existence. It’s been very joyful, even though the theme is grief and loss.

HO: Do you see that exacerbated sense of loss as fueling our desire to colonize the skies?

AV: Greed and power-driven systems have always existed. I’m quoting Indigenous colleagues when I say that we’re witnessing colonization expanding painfully to new scales. We’ve made a lot of mistakes on Earth and on tribal lands, and that’s now poised to go to space. We’re witnessing, in real-time, unchecked, unbridled space expansionism. People are not backing off the cowboy rhetoric, driven by Manifest Destiny and frontiers.

I think what will slow it down is regulation and oversight, and it sure seems like we’re entering an era that’s going to take away checks and balances. I don’t know what the breaking point will be. This is a very litigious country. NASA’s already receiving a lot of lawsuits for debris falling back, for things they might not even have done themselves. Even though we think of storytelling as a cultural thing, there’s a reason space CEOs of leading companies have bought up communication platforms. They understand the power of storytelling, and they get to be the gatekeepers of which part of history survives. We come back to our local communities, what we do have agency over. Our groups will continue the advocacy and the fight to preserve the skies.