Slashdot Mirror
Town Turns Off the Lights To See the Stars
Hugh Pickens writes "Stargazing skies all over the world are disappearing, as the sky above New York City is Class 9 on the Bortle ranking and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. But some places are making an effort to preserve their skywatching heritage as Exmoor National Park was granted International Dark-Sky Reserve status in November and people in the Exmoor town of Dulverton were challenged to switch off their lights as part of the BBC's Stargazing Live, demonstrating that you don't need special equipment to see the stars more clearly, if you have a decent pair of binoculars. 'The whole idea is to show that even a small town, which is still quite dark, can give off quite a lot of light,' says astronomer Mark Thompson. The event in Dulverton gained a lot of support from local residents and businesses. 'It needed a bit of organization to get everyone to say yes,' says town mayor Chris Nelder. 'We want people to just enjoy the night sky, to treasure the fact we have them and to look after them,' adds Claire O'Connor from Exmoor National Park Authority."
Wish my town would do this from time to time!
That's nice, but aren't the lights on for safety reasons? I mean, if they weren't serving any use, people wouldn't have them in the first place.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Simpsons already did it.
I live in a very dark neighborhood... no streetlights within about a mile, and lots of trees (makes stargazing... challenging.) Unfortunately, some of the neighbors don't feel safe unless they leave lights running all night long. It's a very basic human trait: fear of the dark. We have less crime in my dark neighborhood than many nearby well-lit ones, but facts don't erase fear.
I've always lived in semi-rural or town areas in a fairly packed part of the UK. You can see a few stars on a good clear night but there's still a lot of light polution.
I recently went on holiday to a farm in the middle of nowhere in the Yorkshire Dales. I was utterly astounded to find out you can actually see the Milky Way at night - it blew me away. I spent hours just lying on my back in the grass with my mouth open. Wine probably helped. I feel so bad I've missed such a wonder for all these years.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
One of the most amazing sights I've ever seen was when I was staying up in Inverness in Scotland. I walked 50 yards up the road from the village, which only had two street lights, looked up into the night sky at 2am and couldn't believe all the stars I could see that I'd never seen before living in the city.
Should be something that everyone should do just once in their lives, to learn their place as a small nothing hurtling through infinite space!
You see, light causes shadows. And your pedestrian walking home at night will be walking in the light, therefore night blinded by the light (this is why you can't see as many stars at night in a lit street as opposed to your sheltered garden) that illuminates you and makes the shadows deeper.
Meanwhile, the crafty mugger, hiding in the shadow, sees you well illuminated and highlighted out as a target and knows you cannot see them in the shadow, and jumps out on you and mugs you.
The burglar can also see better to use his lockpicks to break into your house.
Your "if they weren't serving any use, people wouldn't have them in the first place" is begging the question: did there have to be a use served for them to be left on 24/7?
This is why I like going back to my hometown, especially during the winter when the sky is cold and clear. Drive to the top of the nearest hill and you can see about ten billion more stars than possible within 20 miles of the city where I live now. My girlfriend grew up in the suburbs and is amazed by the sheer number of stars visible where I grew up. This is exactly the reason why we stick everybody in one big city in New York - so the rest of us in the state can still enjoy the great outdoors.
My grandmother lives in Dulverton, and most of my mother's side of my family are based in Somerset, so well done Slashdot to highlight this part of the world.
My town decided fairly recently to cut street lighting by around about half, they've been pretty careful to keep alley ways and paths lit. It was quite surprising to see the difference this made in seeing the stars, still not great, but I guess it's the price one pays.
When all else fails, you've won.
Not only that, but someone taking part in Stargazing Live reportedly discovered a planet! A nice little series.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
I couple of years ago I went up to the middle of the Alleghany National Forest in the middle of the day (I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh) to wait until night to see what the skies were like from up there. I've been meaning to go to the Cherry Springs star parties for a while and missed my chance so I felt this would give me an idea of what some naked eye star gazing is like from a remote part of the woods.
So I waited and the sky was really fantastic. I've never seen anything like that from around my local area. Even my local amateur observatory is overrun with light. It gives you a real appreciation for how good the skies can be given that even though I was in the middle of nowhere there was still some ground light.
I wrapped it up around 1 AM because I just didn't want to be driving home half asleep. On the way home I came to one of the first semi-large populated areas (Kittanning, for those of you who know the local area) and I see a plume of light on the horizon. I was pissed to think that Kittanning was letting off so much light and the unbelievable contrast when compared to what I was enjoying the last couple of hours. Suddenly I started to realize that it wasn't light from Kittanning but instead was a nearly full moon rising. We simply don't get that kind of light from the moon when it's below the horizon. The light pollution is so bad that even that glow from the rising moon is washed out.
It's a shame. It really is but I don't think society is going to roll back to sensible lighting habits for a handful of people who really want to see this kind of thing. After all, why watch the night sky when Survivor is on?
"Always consider the possibility that installing a light may aid criminal activity."
http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/crime.html#noreduction
Bad guys who wave flashlights are easier to spot than bad guys who don't need extra lighting.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
S14E16 (Production code EABF11)
Your Ad here
More info over at www.darksky.org . It costs a lot of money/oil to keep all those lights on. Is it worth it? Have your children seen the milky way?
Computers obey me.
Our garden is light from the street for most of the night. It's a small dead-end. What makes me wonder most is that my wife sees it as a good thing. "You can see". Ok, but it's night, we just look out of the window, there is no need to watch the grass grow at night. I just don't get it.
The most stars I have seen in a long time is the weekend I spent on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. (Ocracoke) It is far enough off the mainland and it is just a small town that there was no light pollution. I had to catch my breath the first night when I looked up and saw all the stars.
I lived in the Midwest USA back in 2003 and during the Northeastern Blackout that lasted about a week the stargazing was phenomenal! I have never seen the stars so clearly due to the lack of light pollution. The best part about it was it occurred near the perseid meteor shower, so you could follow the meteors from horizon to horizon.
Most lights on are 80+% of the time being unused and just on "because who wants dark areas? The scary monsters might get you!"
And you would think I was kidding, but humans are more afraid of the dark than most like to admit. Hiding behind about a hundred different excuses.
I still know plenty of adults now who are scared hitless-missing-an-s of the dark. Like, genuinely scared.
I'd be surprised if it was any lower than that to be honest.
And more than anything, most lights are at a brightness WAY BEYOND anything needed for "safety".
Yes, its fine if you use some nightlights to be able to see, but most of them are as bright as a desk light, if not brighter.
That is completely unneeded.
Most streetlights could be darkened by 75+% and still be useful for in-dwelling roads. (since, you know, CARS HAVE LIGHTS)
In fact, it'd probably be slightly better since car lights would be noticeable around corners and the like compared to when street lights were AS BRIGHT AS THE SUN, so you would certainly know one was coming even if you were deaf.
Imagine the energy saved by cutting all those probably thousands of streetlights in an average town, all those lights burning through that energy all night, not even needed by anyone.
They aren't known as The Unsociable Hours for no reason, nobody is about, are they lighting the place up for the rats? (I know they technically go from 8 till 6, still)
Not like cars need them, there aren't lights on the thousands of miles of road between towns.
And humans technically should be wearing luminescent clothing at night in the first place if they actually want to be safe. Most don't due to ignorance and "it looks guff". Won't be saying that when you lose your arm.
I rarely ever have the lights on after hours, besides some little LED lights to give basic definition to the room.
Rarely being if other people were around, or if I am looking for anything.
Anything that requires light should be done during the day is my thoughts on it.
The amount of energy wasted on lights is horrendously awful. Same goes with heating. Overheating houses is the worst offense.
Humans evolved OUTDOORS. Stop wasting money on so much heating. It annoys me greatly when someone is sitting there half naked and says "OH GOD ITS FREEZING PUT THE HEATING ON" or something like that. If you are too cold, put some clothes on damn it.
Some people have heating up at ridiculous levels. I remember walking in to someones house once, in to the living room, it was like walking in to a sauna without the steam.
I'm in Scotland at that. A place where it happily snows in the middle of a hot summer and nobody thinks twice about it.
We got it. But why the argument was necessary in the first place I cannot imagine.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I imagine this has changed nowadays.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Starlight
There are many things you shouldn't do every day that are certainly worth trying once in your life.
And you can bet it's good weather that night, with good visibility (apart from the fact that it's dark). It won't be foggy, rainy or snowing, because of ... well... star gazing, you know. So, yes, those light are for safety, and yes, it's totally worth it to ignore that safety once, on a beautiful clear day. Especially when the entire town/country was warned in advance.
My experience is that light pollution only happens when there is smog in the air. In summer, or after strong winds the sky is usually clear. So I think a better approach would be to reduce air pollution, which in turn would reduce light pollution too.
About 35 years ago I got the chance to sail to Hawaii from San Francisco in a small (31') sail boat. Believe me, when you are 1000 miles from the nearest light the night sky is astounding. It is very obvious why the ancient people put so much stock in the night sky: it hangs over you like a presence you can feel.
More recently I used to go to Death Valley for a good night sky, but that is becoming increasingly problematic. Even when there is no moon, there is so much light from Las Vegas and Los Angeles it looks like the moon about to rise (in two places!). *snif*
wouldn't you turn the stars off, and the moon, so the blacks of the display in your cabin would be more true?
If security was the justification for outdoor lighting wouldn't the most affluent neighborhoods have the greatest number of lights?
Most outdoor lights are very wasteful because too much of the light doesn't go where it is needed. Most streetlights only throw about half of their output downward with the rest going sideways (and over the horizon toward the sky) or upwards. There ARE fully shielded streetlights that throw almost all of their light DOWNWARD and these can be of lower wattage to give the same effect without causing light pollution. Even better if they are low pressure sodium lamps which emit light on only two wavelengths of light that can be removed from telescopes and cameras with a simple filter. We need to outlaw all unshielded streetlamps and mandate the use of low pressure sodium lamps in them. Give cities 5 years to remove all existing old tech lighting. Not only will this give us back our skies, but will reduce our energy usage.
Actually the "night lighting agenda" is a plot by the utilities to attempt to maximize the use of their baseline power generating capacity 24 hours a day. (makes sense if you have a MBA) Humor aside, I believe that certain plants operate best if "throttled down" rather than shut down so this almost makes sense from an engineers perspective as well.
This would be reduced significantly.
Honestly, the U of M did this. they threw away all the crap street and building exterior lighting and replaced them with fixtures that do not waste light by spraying it upwards and sideways. All light is controlled.
IT made a huge difference to the light pollution around their observatory on campus.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Earth, by night: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
I live out in the country in central NC, USA and do quite a bit of star gazing out in my pasture.
Occasionally I will invite coworkers that show an interest in astronomy out to my place to use my telescopes.
I always get a chuckle when they step out into the treeless pasture and see the Milky Way stretching out from horizon to horizon for the first time.
Lots of "Oh Wow" and "I Never Knew".
Most folks that live in the city don't know what they are missing and/or have just forgotten how really magnificent the night sky really is.
Quite the shame....
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
I remember during a blackout relatively near New York City being able to see so many stars. And it was dark enough that I could see satellites traveling by. That was a great day.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I'd like to know how many births happen in 9 months from this happening.
I wish the cruise ships I'd travelled on had done this. It would have been awesome being in the middle of the ocean and seeing the stars. But no... the whole upper deck was brilliantly lit and there were strings of multicolored party lights hanging over the deck.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
My best chance to see a perfectly dark sky came about 8 years ago. (I'm in Cleveland) The sky was pretty clear and ALL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003/ the lights were out, but around 9:46pm an almost full moon rose and ruined the whole thing... http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KBKL/2003/8/13/DailyHistory.html?req_city=Cleveland&req_state=OH&req_statename=Ohio/
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
I live in the Boston area so the night sky is hard to see. I usually take a week off during the summer and travel to the family lakeside camp in New Brunswick, Canada. There, the night sky is so clear you can see satellites, plane lights, shooting stars, etc. It's amazing just to lay out on the dock and wonder.
Studies do show that lights reduce crime. But... what if the lights were reduced or increased everywhere at once? Maybe criminals just prefer the dark areas but that doesn't prove that they need dark areas. Maybe the when given a choice the criminals go elsewhere when they see light but would otherwise operate the same. Just a thought that can probably never be tested unfortunately.
There was an article many moons back (20 years or so) in New Scientist talking about street lighting and light pollution. From memory it was arguing for having more but less powerful lights better focussed. These would consume less electricity and provide light more uniformly and in the "right" place. Lighting up "the sky" is not the right place. As for security/safety it was pointed out that villains actually like shadow where they can hide so having more lights would improve safety by removing that shadow area.
I saw this on Weibo, the Chinese twitter, a few weeks ago. Loosely translating from memory:
The first time I went to Los Angeles in the mid 90s, while we were lining up to land in the airliner, I was dazzled by the lit-up sky. Thousands of lights, all sparkling in the darkness. Nothing like what we had in China. I recently went to America again, and commented to my colleague that the sky looked rather plain and dark. My colleague didn't understand what I meant. Upon reflection, the meaning was not that America was dark...but that China was so bright.
The post had thousands of replies, mostly consisting of "China is strong now". I put my reply in about light pollution laws in America, but you know nobody would listen. I couldn't even find "light pollution" in my online dictionary to translate, it's possible the concept does not exist in the Chinese language.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
... would be a wonderful thing to turn off in most communities. For the most part, they serve no useful purpose but to waste electricity/energy. Cars have headlights. They have some crime deterrent effect in some spots that can be weighed against the savings in money and energy, but there are whole stretches of road that are illuminated like the daytime where there is no conceivable benefit from doing so. It's not all that clear that they deter crime in most locations and times where they are used -- at 3 a.m. there isn't anybody to see a crime, no matter how lit an area is. All you do is provide the criminals with the light they need to operate without the risk or inconvenience of using flashlights that do stand out on a dark night. A 100W street light (which is rather small -- many are 250-400 W Sodium lamps) at $0.10 kw/hour costs roughly $1/day to operate, or $365/year -- plus maintenance. Even small cities typically have hundreds or thousands of lights -- hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in aggregate. I suspect almost any community could turn off half of their street lights without compromising safety very much or at all, and thereby save over $30,000 for every hundred lights they turn off. rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
There's a documentary called "The City Dark" which is all about light pollution. Some people claim that excess nighttime light plays a role in the development of cancer, and disrupts the seaward migration of just hatched sea turtles. These ideas are discussed in the film, but in a more humorous than preachy way. I'd be interested to see what the Slashdot community has to say about the movie, since I screened it with a crowd of mostly artists.
North Korea must have the best stargazing, there's almost no light pollution at all! http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm
This is one of the many reasons why I live in a small rural town.
I can see stars just by looking out my window, I can walk 10 minutes to the edge of town to get a pretty clear view or I can drive 10 minutes to get a spectacular view.
That's true but I've been up in aircraft at night flying over roads where I know the streetlights definitively don't send light directly upwards, yet the road is still very easy to see. Okay some cities are more extreme than others but "normal" cities are going to emit a lot of light unless you do something drastic. And it doesn't really take a lot of lighting before your night vision fades away. I'm a bit more there that if you're going to do it, do it proper and go to some remote area. It's not that hard to find in most countries.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I can dream can't I? For now, we can participate in the Globe at Night project.
Once they switched the lights back on, everything except their telescopes had been burgled.
Some of the darkest night skies in the continental U.S. are around the four corners region. Canyonlands National Park and Capitol Reef National Park are especially good. Also Chaco Canyon in New Mexico though you can't get into the actual park at night unless they are doing a dark sky program. Pretty much most of the area in southern Utah would be good (Lake Powell, Escalante, etc).
It's absolutely amazing to see the night sky without any light pollution.
Lets take a cruise to N. Korea! Their electric utility firms do a wonderful job of managing light pollution for their people.
I just can't seem to find any N. Korean cruise lines on the web.
Taken with a Canon EOS 50D camera -- no telescope.
These too, though you have to be somewhat northerly to see this stuff.
THAT is what YOU could see, if you could get your town to turn off the lights.
Streetlights? Phooey. Just carry a flashlight. They also make special lamps that don't reflect a lot of light upwards if you must have light (why???)
You -- and especially your kids, if you have any -- are missing a heck of a lot if you live, as most do, in the midst of light pollution.
Trust me on this one: Outdoor artificial lighting is overrated.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I had the privilege of camping a few years back near Dulverton, quite a bit out of town on the moors, and the sky was unbelievable then. I could see stars in areas of sky I would usually in Bristol have seen as dark. Breathtaking. On the down side, a town near me recently started turning of the street lamps at night, and there was a fatal road accident which was proven to be caused by the lack of lights. Leading up to this incident were a string of near misses.
In Belgium, many towns have been doing this once a year since 2008 or earlier: it's called Nacht van de Duisternis / La Nuit de l'Obscurité.
Besides startgazing and awareness, there are many activities including guided walking tours to learn about nocturnal animals (and the effect light has on them).
http://www.bondbeterleefmilieu.be/nacht/index.php
http://www.nuitdelobscurite.be/
IF you live in NYC and have a car you can go to the custer observatory in south hold on long island. While its not as dark as you can get , you can still see a ton more stars. Its a$5 donation plus they have a big roof mount telescope that you can use (even have the turnable roof).
Heck I moved out east on long island to the edge of the town of brookhaven and i see a lot more sky now.
Though you were being facetious. It's also a good reason to NOT have a GOTO or motorised scope.