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"Night Reveals a Universe"presented by Babak Tafreshi
Babak Tafreshi spent the past three decades photographing surreal scenes of the night sky on all continents, an adventurous journey to the world at night where landmarks on Earth connect to celestial wonders, where science meets art, and astrophotography contributes to nature conservation. His work aims to increase public awareness of the values of the natural night environment and how to preserve it from our growing light pollution. The nighttime face of our planet has changed in the past century. Our artificial lights significantly impact the habitat and behavior of many nocturnal species. A part of his work takes us to iconic World Heritage sites and landmarks of various civilizations, where we find connections between our many cultures and the night sky, where we see icons of different beliefs and religions under the same sky, attesting to the unified nature of Earth as a home for all mankind. One People, One Sky!
About the Speaker:
Babak Tafreshi is an Iranian-American science photojournalist and National Geographic Explorer at Large based in Boston. He merges art and science through visual stories, using photos, videos, and 360 immersive media. Since 2007, Tafreshi has been directing a growing team of photographers in nearly 25 countries for “The World at Night” project. His other long-term projects are “Life at Night Atlas” (where, since 2023, he has documented the nighttime ecosystem and impact of light pollution), “From Above & Below” (where, since 2024, he has achieved coordinated Earth-space night photography), and National Parks at Night. His imagery aims to reconnect humanity with the natural world, reveal the wonders of science to the public, and connect cultures through common interest in the night sky. In 2009, he received the Lennart Nilsson Award, the world’s most recognized scientific imaging award at the time, and in 2022, he earned the Royal Photographic Society Award and the National Geographic Society’s Wayfinder Award. The International Astronomical Union named the minor planet 276163 after Tafreshi, whose interest in astronomy began when he first saw the moon through a telescope as a child in Tehran.
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Rood Hall, Western Michigan University (WMU),Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States
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