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Why We Need to Keep Our Night Skies Dark (Video)
Kelly
Beatty has a unique perspective on the world of astronomy:
Beatty's been on the staff of Sky & Telescope magazine
for nearly 40 years as a writer and editor, including a stint heading
"Night Sky" magazine. He's also written what's been called "the
definitive guide for the armchair astronomer," and teaches astronomy
to people of all ages. (He even has an asteroid named after him.)
Besides being fascinated with the objects we can see in Earth's skies,
Beatty takes the skies themselves seriously: his Twitter handle is NightSkyGuy for a reason. We talked a few weeks ago, in
dark-skied rural Maine, about his involvement with the International Dark-Sky Association,
and why you should care about ubiquitous light pollution, even if you
don't have a deep interest in star-gazing. (And it's not just to be courteous
to your neighbors.)
A few days ago, the Washington Post ran a somewhat unconventional travel article on Tucson as a destination for skygazers, and mentioned the influence of the ISDA and the local astronomy community in creating the local ordinances limiting light pollution:
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/seeing-stars-in-tucsons-brilliant-night-sky/2013/08/22/5bc4d34e-05e2-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html
If (when) our mountains of garage reach a certain height we can just put our telescopes on top.
We need to help be able to see the galaxy. I enjoyed as a kid. Now as a photographer for Impostor Magazine shooting fashion, this makes me miss the good old days!
I find it's best to get above 10,000 ft, as rural as possible, and preferably the first clear night after a good rain. Oh, and when it's a new moon.
Having just been out in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, southern end of the Maroon Bells, for 2 nights camping at 11k+, the night sky before the waning moon came up was phenomenal. Great view of the Milky Way!
I have yet to acquire the appropriate camera gear, or telescope, for duration shots/filming, but I'll get there eventually!
Seriously, this is what people always say when I say outdoor lighting wastes energy and causes light pollution.
It makes me so angry that I could hide in the bushes outside their house and stab them to death with a glowstick.
Have you at least read the transcript? He isn't advocating the removal of night lighting. He's advocating LED lights that are focused downwards, which would not only help with the light pollution problem but is more efficient energy wise.
I don't think that I have ever met a person who, when away from the city lights, didn't marvel at the grand display overhead. I also don't think that I have ever met a person who upon re-entering a built up area ever said, "I'm glad those twinkling stars have finely gone away."
To be even more specific the darker it has been the more people have always marveled. When you can see our galaxy edge on in all its glory then the whole experience becomes just that much better.
But for some reason we don't fight the big box stores when they blast a megawatt or two into the completely unused corners of their lots. Or the car dealerships that seem to want to keep their cars warm with the lighting; not to mention the dealers that then use the skyward spotlights to announce that their salesmen are like the gods of Olympus.
Obviously some lighting is necessary but I would love to see some requirements for intelligent lighting. Lights that take into account that there is nobody needing their services and thus they can turn off. I suspect that at 2 in the morning all but the most populated areas would be quite dark. Plus the added bonus of reduced energy costs.
I'll take a clear sky over culture any day. Hence why I'm visit cities, but no longer live in them.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Perhaps you haven't heard of Burning Man?
As anybody who's been to Vegas can confirm, lots of lights = lots of culture. So, yes, you are right.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
How much longer before genetic engineering gives us humans the night vision many of our fellow mammals have?
Yeah, I'm one of those people who never understood the lack of lampshades on our streetlights. There is no reason shine any light above the horizon, except to illuminate the buildings, and most of them, you don't want to see.
You know what else travels far, the noise. You can hear a city from 10-20 miles away.
And the RF, well..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
First, that lighting makes you less secure.
A thief needs light to see his victim properly. A burgler needs to see how to break in. A rapist needs to see the mark.
If they had to have a torch on them to get that, they'd be a hell of a lot easier to see.
Your "statistics" are a complete washout.
it may seem so intuitively, but research is inconclusive. Bright night-time lighting produces sharp shadows that bad guys can hide in, and reduces the eye's ability to detect peripheral movements.
See http://cops.usdoj.gov/Publications/e1208-StreetLighting.pdf
and http://keysso.net/community_news/May_2003/improved_lighting_study.pdf
Does it annoy anyone else that I you can't view slashdot videos behind a firewall and you can NOT view them on a Android device. Unless Slashdot can use a friendly format for firewalls and Android devices can you please just use YouTube or at least cross-post it. It's really annoying.
Thanks!
Besides your response not having anything to do with the comment you replied to, Burning Man doesn't apply because he used the words "interesting" and "culture".
At ~8:05 into the video they discuss the harm of bluelight from LCD screens and the importance of melatonin.
I've been using f.lux for years. It's makes working at night much more comfortable.
I'm = I
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Even light that is laser-focused toward the ground tends to bounce back up from the gray concrete. Take a night flight at your nearby general aviation airport and look down. You'll see few lights directly, and large swaths of glowy orange.
What stunned me most about the night sky in Vegas was how the light from the Strip overwhelmed the stars so much that the sky appeared to be pitch black. Looking over the city from the top of the Stratosphere I could only see a black void above everything.
Let's work on noise pollution first. Modified cars, deafening noise, thumping music so loud that you hear it ten blocks away.
There's not even much reason to shine light at the horizon - all that gets you is a bunch of night-vision destroying bright points in the distance. Light falls off with the inverse square of distance, and beyond a short range it no longer provides anywhere near enough power for our eyes to use. Ideally we would figure out how far from the light you can get before it ceases to be useful, and shield the light so that you can't see it directly from much beyond that distance. That would actually *improve* effective illumination since you wouldn't have all these bright point sources in the distance blinding you to everything within several degrees of them around them.
Can't tell you how many times I've driven into town at night and cussed out the light-lined streets that make it impossible to see anything.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have been in well-lighted gated communities where the lighting was well designed; you could clearly see around you for safety but light pollution was minimized, such that you could luck up and enjoy a great view of the sky. How did they accomplish this? They installed the lights properly, such that all of the light was aimed down at the ground on and surrounding walkways. It was very safe, minimized light pollution (you cannot eliminate it because some light will reflect off the ground and of course off of fog), and of course, very "green" because all of the light produced was aimed at the ground.
I live in Lee, NH - on most nights, except when the moon is at or within a couple of days of full, I can see the Milky Way very clearly - I consider our sky to be very dark, but by astronomical standards it isn't (compared to oh, say, north-central Maine, Antarctica, northern Canada, and central Australia - or North Korea where the only people who have lights is tyrants). The only (clear) nights I cannot see the Milky Way is Friday Nights, when the NASCAR track has events going on - when I drive by there it pisses me off. The lights are installed improperly, spraying probably >70% of the light produced straight up into the sky. This is commonplace in the city, where people are ignorant asses and I get that, but this is rural NH. Why the hell are you assholes at Lee Speedway wasting all that electricity to produce wasted light, rendering the sky unviewable? When it comes up for vote, I will be voting to NOT give them an extended season, and if the vote is at a town meeting I will explain why - it won't be the noise, nor the traffic, but the light pollution.
I don't mind the noise of the cars (hell I love engines as I'm a motorhead myself, having driven many muscle, sports and exotic cars, and having rebuilt several engines myself, but the idea of a race where you only turn left bores me to tears) but the light pollution is awful; it ruins one of the best aspects of living in a rural area.
Lighting fixtures are stupid-easy to select and install properly.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Ever visited/seen documentaries of just about any developing nation on the planet? Rich and varied cultures with roots going back hundreds or thousands of years.
Oh wait, you mean the sort of "culture" that lets you get a Big Mac at 2am on your way back from watching the midnight showing of Slasher XXIV in stereoscopic surround sound. Nope, they don't have any of that.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Look up. I just moved away from Boston to New Hampshire. I'd say NH is far more cultured since people are far more polite and entertainment is plentiful, plus it's nice to actually GO OUTSIDE and enjoy nature, especially the dark sky at night. You know, SCIENCE SHIT, as in astronomy.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There are a lot of links, but none of them go to anything relevant to the post.
actually, by the site's own claims 22% of energy is used for lighting, and 8% of the 22% for outdoor lighting.....1.6% is not much to be worried about saving a portion of, sorry.
From a wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption article on energy usage
Energy consumption in the G20 increased by more than 5% in 2010 after a slight decline of 2009. In 2009, world energy consumption decreased for the first time in 30 years, by 1.1%—equivalent to 130 megatonnes (130,000,000 long tons; 140,000,000 short tons) of oil—as a result of the financial and economic crisis, which reduced world GDP by 0.6% in 2009.[11]
So 1.6% of that is 2080000 long tons of oil per year based on 2009 figures, it's almost certain that figure is higher now. Now work out how many power stations it would take to create the equivalent output. Not so insignificant?
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
I could see having a country-wide holiday every year where the lights around the city would be shut off early in the evening. We have plenty of useless holidays already, why not one that actually gives city kids a chance to see the stars?
You mean drunken night-time culture. Visit nearly any rural area on earth and you'll find vastly different cultures in nearly every place. Visit any bustling city at 11pm and you'll find the same drunken assholes in all of them.
Problem solved.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Wait, did you just say NYC at night has very little crime? O.o
Traveled to the Cherry Springs dark sky park for the first time this past weekend. Was quite awesome. Will need to go on a night when there is less moon, but what we saw before the moon came up was fantastic.
If we must have clear skies for stargazing, but want well-lit cities, why not have all lighting off for just a few days each year. Everyone can then gaze in awe at the sky, and have practicality the rest of the time.
It could become a cultural thing where everyone participates. Even a little light pollution wrecks the experience of a REALLY clear deep black sky, so I say it's all or nothing.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Did you at least read the sarcasm in his post?
The Dark Sky Meter lets you point your (newer) iPhone overhead to determine the sky magnitude. Supposed to work reasonably well (I've not used it). Their website has a map of various readings from all over.
Those light-lined streets aren't lit anymore. Some busy streets have one light on every other light pole still powered and some streets don't have any powered lights.
I'm = I
I'm Score
I live in Lee, NH - on most nights
Where do you live on the other nights?
Funny thing about Las Vegas is that it is both the worst and one of the best places to see the stars. The strip is extremely bright but relatively small and rather than being surrounded by suburban sprawl and smaller towns and villages like most other cities, Vegas is surrounded by empty desert. Drive out into the desert just far enough for the Vegas glow to disappear from the horizon and you're in business.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
keep going, the LED lights save 40% of that 1.6% or 0.64%. So 0.64 of 140 million short tons of oil * 7.3 barrels per ton is 65 million barrels of oil equivalent saved for the whole world. the U.S. alone consumes 19 million barrels of oil per day, so why bother?
Quite simply because there is never going to be just one thing that can make that big a difference all by its self. What's more likely, finding 20 measures that can make 1-2% difference each, or one thing that would make 20-40% difference? ( or whatever your threshold for worthwhile is). While you're thinking about it, why don't you leave all of your electrical appliances on all the time? It would be statistically insignificant and therefore affect no-one.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
nuclear reactors produce 55% of the power where I live, that's a solution that can make a huge difference. one ton of natural uranium can produce the energy of 16,000 tons of coal.
You say that like it is a universal fact. I can assure you many of us choose to live the country living and enjoy the nature and clear sky everyday. Also, no hobos or junkies asking for money, clean my windshield or mug me. If the big city works for you, that is fine with me. Just dont put everyone in your basket.
Tomorrow is another day...
Where are mod points when you ned them?
Tomorrow is another day...
The guy from Caesar's Legion?
-- Counting backwards since 1984!
I propose we build an observatory in North Korea.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
but want well-lit cities,
Do not want.
Criminals don't give a damn about the 'cover of darkness'. That is just the sales pitch power companies made up to sell street lighting.
Have gnu, will travel.
Vegas != culture
Its where dumb rednecks go to get ripped off.
Have gnu, will travel.
Bull.
Criminals work our neighborhoods during the day. Because that's when everyone is at work. The reason they come out in business districts at night is because that is when the people are not there. Except for muggers. They go where the people are, brightly lit or not.
The whole light == security thing is a sales pitch by the power companies who want to sell street lighting.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not only does it save enough in electrical costs, the LED street lights actually do cut down on light scatter. For the last two years they've been installing them in Santa Cruz, Cal. At night I can actually see at street level much better, and as I look up, I can see more of the stars and even the Milky Way. The light is more like a bright full moon night. Not at all like the washed out red spectrum light from hi-pressure sodium lights.
Wait, did you just say NYC at night has very little crime? O.o
Wait, was that a whooshing sound I just heard coming from over your head? O.o
Agreed. I grew up listening to Sears Point/Sonoma Raceway on summer nights and looking out my window at the countless stars in our seemingly black skies... 20+ years later, the sound of the races gives me a pleasant relaxed feeling, but 10+ years of having a city council in developers' pockets (claiming "progress" means turning every square inch of carefully-preserved open land into buildings/concrete) has caused such severe rapid growth that the night sky is now merely dark blue and has depressingly few stars.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
That is a real misconception. Light doesn't reduce crime, it only gives people a better feeling so they tent to come to places where they feel safe. Criminals most of the time don't like to be watched so go to other areas. That is also the reason why you hear music in some parking places to give people a safe feeling. To be honest, I prefer a parking without the music so I hear other people. And about the light? Please turn it off, it gives burglars the need to use a flashlight again and what is easier then to aim for the light with your gun ;-)
In The Netherlands there are towns that turn of lights after a certain time and crime didn't go up. Other cities are also reducing lights and on some places it is turned of completely. In other places we may just need lights with motion sensors so they turn on when its needed. In GB soms roads have LEDs in the asphalt which turn green when your light hit them, but they are orange when a car past the same spot in say the last 60 seconds so you know people are in front of you.
Light itself doesn't create security, only a safe feeling, but how it is used it how it becomes a security measure. This is what some cities in The Netherlands are also experimenting with. How to use light to create safety not to give everything a nice glow. You may want to read what green light does for the environment.
We can keep the skies dark, but maybe a better idea is just to work towards space tourism and an off self sustainable off-world colony. Then you could really see the stars, and help fight Extinction.
You need light on the ground, not light in the sky. Australia's capital city has an observatory mounted on a hill. As such careful thought was given to the design of street lighting. Light pollution is a fraction of what it is in every other major city yet the streets and parks still all meet the same standards for illumination as elsewhere.
Correctly designed lighting does make a huge difference though. Areas that mandate proper cowling of outdoor lights and low pressure sodium are notably less light polluted. The big island of Hawaii takes light pollution rather seriously, and it does make a massive difference. The lights of Hilo are very dim and muted from a distance. It works so well that it is difficult to pick out constellations in the night sky from 9,000 ft. up Mauna Kea, not because the sky is too bright, but because there are too many stars in the night sky.
Contrast that with my home in south Florida where it seems there is a mandate that every parking lot be illuminated with white lights pointed mostly skyward. On clear nights you can make out stars all the way down to magnitude 1. Other nights you've got the moon and Venus (sadly, that's only mildly sarcastic).
Consider yourself lucky. Our night skies are a sci-fi film version of orange, with few stars keeping the moon company.
Here's the US light pollution map: http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ and here's what the colours mean: http://cleardarksky.com/lp/VndbtPObNYlp.html?Mn=cameras If you haven't been to a truly dark sky (blue or darker on that map) then you really owe it to yourself to go. Just take yourself and some binoculars and look up. Mind-blowing. Unfortunately, the skies are just getting brighter the whole time. Whilst LEDs are more directional, they're also brighter and they deliver whiter light that does more harm to your dark adaptation and is harder to filter out. If LEDs were used properly, we might have a chance for getting better illumination and an improvement in light pollution. From what I've been seeing, though, LEDs are just going to make things worse.
soylentnews.org
Where I live nuclear reactors provide something like 49% of the power. The rest is hydroelectric.
I don't think switching to full nuclear is going to change much.
Your moms bedroom. Why?
Agreed. I think for most people the 'safety' aspect is more of a 'night light in the bedroom' sort of effect. There's no real safety aspect to it; it just feels comforting. Having grown up in a rural area, I was often outside at night with few lights around. You are at a disadvantage against creatures with better night vision (the occasional skunk I ran across, for example) but most humans you could see coming a mile away, because of their flashlights, their cigarettes, or what-not. The danger is in the boundary areas--it's easy to get jumped if you're in the light and your assailant is in the shadows, because they can see and you can't. Either light everything, or nothing. For example, if you need light to see where you're going when you get home, don't turn on the porch light. Light the whole friggin' front of the house to abolish the shadows. Then, turn it all off once you're inside. If you see cigarettes or flashlights in the front yard, turn the lights back on, and take advantage of the 15-20 seconds their temporary blindness gives you to take better aim.
So if I offer to write you a check for a billion dollars for doing something simple, you're going to decline because "Meh, a billion dollars is nothing compared to Bill Gates."
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well that depends on design. specifically how you aim the light, or whether you leave large shadows. if you just toss up a light say "good nuff", you get what you deserve.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Those light-lined streets aren't lit anymore. Some busy streets have one light on every other light pole still powered and some streets don't have any powered lights.
Depends where you are - where I live they tried that, and there was outcry. I don't understand why - with every other light turned off it *still* seemed too bright to me. They also decided to turn the street lights off on some streets between the hours of 1am and 5am, and people complained that it was endangering the elderly and school children (who are obviously all going to school at 5am?!)... Eventually the council got voted out and the new council undid all that good work.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I understand where you're coming from, 55% of your local energy is nuclear, so that's one thing that makes a big difference to fossil fuels in your areas fuel mix. That however wasn't my point, my use of barrels of oil was an arbritary measure of energy use to make the point that 1.6% of world energy in not an insignificant figure. Without getting into the advantages and dissadvantages of nuclear, the real issue we face is reducing our power consumption altogether, not just hydrocarbons. Any sustainable energy solution is going to be made easier/possible by a reduction in worldwide energy use whether its nuclear,wind power or anything else. So, initiatives such as this one have my full support because it deals with two issues, light polution gets on my nerves (I too could drive for an hour to see the stars better, but where I grew up that wasn't the case, wouldn't it be nicer not to have to?), and a not insignificant reduction in energy use. Whats not to like?
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
but energy use drives progress and quality/length of life. we need a plan of producing increasing amounts of energy that is carbon neutral and with no lingering waste products (which advanced reactors can do).
Come live near New York City. Stars? What are stars?
where do you live?
We really need to do something about the much more serious Aurora Borealis. When those "Northern Lights" get turned on, even the brightest stars are hidden.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
It's been a couple of years now, but we did have a major, regional wide power outage occur here in Southern California. With the blackout starting in the late afternoon going up until who knew when, I was looking forward to a nice dark Milky Way filled night sky,.... that was until I remembered it was a full moon. Damn, of all the luck. However, the evening wasn't a total wash. Even though it was weeknight, because of the hot weather, most folks came out of their homes, many had impromptu block parties, cooking outdoors, enjoying each others company, making the best of what turned out to be a pleasant situation. As for the so called crime that supposedly occurs in these types of situations, it seems that not much of anything occurred that evening. Well,... there was the exception of a group knuckle heads that tried to break into a BevMo store using flashlights that signaled their presence on the roof of the building. Needless to say they didn't get very far in their "endeavor". Afterwards there were a few folks who talked about turning down the lights on given nights, but talk is as far as it went and the whole episode is now sadly enough forgotten.
You are ignoring the fact that a well lighted area can be more secure because people can see potential threats and so change their behavior to reduce the threat. If I go into a well lit area and there is a single man visible I as a woman might decide to remain in my vehicle until he leaves. Or I might wait until other people, who I assume are not associates of said individual are present before leaving my car. Were I forced to walk through a dark parking lot I would never see the potential danger.
I would maintain that the proper statistic to measure in the Netherlands example was not the crime rate in isolation but rather the economic activity rate along with the crime rate. If the crime rate did not go up, but the economic activity rate went down that is an indication that fewer people are venturing out in the dark than would have if there was light. I know I would hesitate to frequent dark streets.
but energy use drives progress and quality/length of life. we need a plan of producing increasing amounts of energy that is carbon neutral and with no lingering waste products (which advanced reactors can do).
All very good points, but wasted energy helps none of these things. Also sustainability is at least if not more important than carbon neutrality, I have a feeling that figures that are produced for carbon neutrality are so manipulated as to be useless IMO.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
The whole light == security thing is a sales pitch by the power companies who want to sell street lighting.
That's not true: they don't need to "sell" it. People are shit scared of the dark and they want lighting. They see boogie men in every shadow. I used to live in shared house which was located 200 m down a narrow, unlit, footpath. All the girls in that house complained about it. They all thought they were going to get raped. They all moved out within a few months because of the dark path.
soylentnews.org
Less blue, "softer" light is what most incandescent lights deliver. ~2700K is what consumers expect, and that's part of the reason why bone-white compact fluorescent bulbs were so unpopular. But red and amber LEDs have been around for 30 years. Do ya think that companies could produce some less blue LED bulbs that can compete with incandescent bulbs, or is just maybe cost still an issue? And how much does the color temperature of ambient light have to do with melatonin production? Or does the presence (or absence) of light 500nm alone affect melatonin? If our resident expert can't answer these questions, then he's just blowing smoke.
Is there any way to save this video off - so I can easily show it to say local city council people?