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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.)
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.
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.