Atlas of Worldwide Light Pollution

mgarraha writes: "Researchers at the University of Padua and NOAA have analyzed DMSP data to produce a new atlas of night sky brightness due to artificial lighting. Previous maps only showed the distribution of light sources. Their paper will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Here is an AP article."

Comments

Intelligent choice and design aren't free.

[Giant Hairy Spider]

People never deliberately do things wastefully and stupidly, it's because they're busy with other things, haven't expended the effort to understand the problem, or are simply not bright enough to understand it themselves and would have to hire someone else to do it for them.

You might say, "No problem! I know the answer, they just have to do as I say." but even after you manage to communicate it to them, they have no reason to believe you. You're just one more person with an agenda claiming unrelated benefits for compliance, which makes you as unreliable as a commercial advertiser.

After reading this story, almost everyone will forget about it, because it's really not very important. Astronomy is an impractical profession and an unusual hobby; it might be different if you could never get away from the light, but this is simply about the convenience of star-gazers. There are better things to spend our resources on.

Re:The Milky Way Is A Spectacular Sight...

[Giant Hairy Spider]

There's really nothing else like it. Not just the Milky Way, but the sheer number of stars everywhere in the sky in a dark area with clean air.

I live in southern central Canada, and going an hour away from Winnipeg (a fair-sized city in the middle of nowhere, by American, let alone European or Pacific rim, standards, so sprawling and covered with trees that it hardly looks like a city when you fly over it) is enough to get as good a view as you'll see anywhere.

It's not enough for me to make the trip just for that view, but it would be if I didn't see it a few times a year anyway. Don't miss it if you get a chance to just walk outside and look. It's an amazing thing to realize there really is no roof of any kind, just a clear view for a million parsecs.

OTOH, I was stunned in a similar way the first time I saw the glowing low cloud cover of a city night sky. I grew up in the country, and didn't realize that cloud cover didn't necessarily mean a pitch black sky at night. Very eerie.