Shalina Aguirre, a Tucson High Magnet School student, studies the constellation Orion from her back yard as she tracks the city's level of light pollution as part of a project that was started in Tucson and now involves 12 other countries.

david sanders / Arizona Daily Star

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Shalina Aguirre sits at a table amid the toys and clutter in the back yard of her Midtown home, her eyes straining to find three famous stars in the sky.

It doesn't take long to find the twinkling lights that make up the "belt" in the constellation Orion, and she points out the mythological hunter to her father, Randy, who's been looking in the wrong direction.

Her next step is to compare what she sees on a clear Friday night with seven computer-generated displays of Orion in various shades of visibility.

Aguirre, a 15-year-old freshman at Tucson High Magnet School, believes what she sees falls somewhere between crystal clear and almost dim, a 5 on a scale of 1 to 7.

"You can pretty much see all of it," she says. "The light pollution isn't too bad."

Hundreds more Tucson students will be ogling Orion in the next few days, taking part in a worldwide project tracking how artificial lights dim views of the stars in at least a dozen countries. The project, in its second full year, is called Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment.

As part of a weeklong survey that ends Wednesday, GLOBE participants will study the constellation and mark the visibility level. Their data will be stored on a Web site for reference. As of Monday afternoon, 1,085 out of an expected 5,000 entries had been made on the site.

GLOBE started in Tucson, at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. But the push to increase awareness of light pollution began a few years earlier on the other side of the world.

Six years ago in Athens, Greece, teacher Margarita Metaxa conducted a survey at a school, and the results brought about a citywide change in lighting ordinances.

GLOBE organizers have spent time with local officials and state legislators to lobby for stricter laws regulating artificial light, and they believe GLOBE could further their cause.

"This is one way to bring awareness to a lot of people about the inefficiency of lighting," said Connie Walker, senior science education specialist at NOAO and a GLOBE organizer.

But equally important for the organizers is changing views on astronomy, both in the classroom and in the community. It's worked for the residents of La Serena, Chile, who partnered with Tucson schools in GLOBE's first year. After a successful collaboration — including bilingual teleconferences — La Serena's government approved a new astronomy center.

Teachers and astronomers here say the first year of GLOBE sparked a burst of interest among students who had taken Tucson's place as a front-runner in astronomical research for granted.

Aguirre's science teacher, Glenn Furnier, said students have begun to understand that astronomy is more than bright stars and mythological stories. Starlight affects the biological and migratory patterns of animals on Earth, and other science fields are linked to it.

"It might awaken a new interest in astronomy," Furnier said.

Aguirre, an aspiring writer, said her science classes would have been boring if not for GLOBE.

"I could get used to going out and looking at stars," she said. "It'd be fun, but I don't like math, and you need that."

Teachers hope students like her will begin to find a passion for science that could translate into passing scores on the upcoming science portion of the AIMS test. That test will be given to students in fourth, eighth and 10th grades starting in 2007.

"Hopefully, it will get them to see that the testing is real," said Elizabeth Evans-Razi, who uses ecology and Earth science in her astronomy class at Safford Magnet Middle School. "They seem to be full of curiosity about this area of our curriculum."

But for now, it's the stars that matter. Aguirre studies her charts carefully and explains her work while her younger siblings play video games inside. Her father paces near her, absorbing every detail.

"I didn't know there was such a thing as light pollution," Randy Aguirre says. "I wished I learned stuff like that when I was in school."