Teachers often accuse their students of staring off into space, but 6,000 kids in the Penn Harris Madison system are being encouraged to do just that.

It is all part of a science experiment to try and figure out whether light pollution is affecting our starry nights.

The kids met with Mishawaka Mayor Jeff Rea Wednesday to tell him about their experiment.

During the last two weeks in March, 6,000 kids, grades three through eight, will be keeping their eyes on the sky.

"In PHM alone over 6,000 students who will be predicating with naked eye observations -- and so it's going to be subjective. However, also from each of 14 schools there are teams of kids that will have sky quality meters which will quantify a more objective measure of the sky glow," explained Chuck Bueter of PHM Schools.

2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo gazing into a telescope.

And to commemorate that event the United Nations declared 2009 the international year of astronomy.