Night Being 'Lost' To Artificial Light (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A study of pictures of Earth by night has revealed that artificial light is growing brighter and more extensive every year. Between 2012 and 2016, the planet's artificially lit outdoor area grew by more than 2 percent per year. Scientists say a "loss of night" in many countries is having negative consequences for "flora, fauna, and human well-being." A team published the findings in the journal Science Advances. It showed that changes in brightness over time varied greatly by country. Some of the world's "brightest nations," such as the US and Spain, remained the same. Most nations in South America, Africa and Asia grew brighter. Only a few countries showed a decrease in brightness, such as Yemen and Syria -- both experiencing warfare. The nocturnal satellite images -- of glowing coastlines and spider-like city networks -- look quite beautiful but artificial lighting has unintended consequences for human health and the environment.

Comments

Good can we ban all street lights now?

[silas_moeckel]

At least have them shut off after midnight.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[ColdWetDog]

We could all move to North Korea. That place is pretty dark at night (and during the day for that matter).

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Penguinisto]

There would be arguments concerning public safety (and Lord only knows how many lawsuits would spring from such a move), but I could totally get behind shutting off, say, 50% of all street lights after a certain hour (say 10pm?), and in small-enough towns, shut 'em all off entirely (I think a lot of small towns do that anyway to save on the power bills).

I'm just glad I live 30 miles away from any sizable city, and 20 from the nearest town of any kind (which has like a small handful of dim street lights at most.) When family (especially young nieces and nephews) come to visit, I see the same awestruck look on their faces the first time they go outside and look up on a clear night... I actually have to point out that the big band along the sky is the Milky Way, even to the teenaged ones. Pointing out satellites (especially if it's the ISS) gets an even cooler reaction out of them. Makes me feel damned fortunate and humbled at the same time to get that view every night...

Almost every property has a big, fat Sodium-vapor or Mercury-vapor light, but it's rare that I bother having mine on, and given that I'm in Oregon, not too many others have theirs on at night either.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

This would probably make driving at night in residential areas. Maybe we implement curfews to go with our streetlight ban?

What are you doing out so late, citizen? Papers, please.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[mikael]

Every time a small town or village does that, guess what happens? The burglars, thieves and muggers come out. They even stick to those bits of the street where every other street light has been switched off to save money.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Dark Korea is Best Korea!

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[mjr167]

We don't have street lights in my town and we manage to not hit things. There are these things called headlights installed on my car. Try turning yours on.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's cool, the speed limit is higher than 25 here and headlights are inadequate in lighting the road far enough to prevent accidents, unless they're high beams in which case you risk blinding other drivers.

Have fun cruising around po'dunk though.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[DontBeAMoran]

Wow, never come to Canada, buddy. There's lights on most of the highways, but other than that you're on your own with your car headlights.

Use the high beams when there's nobody ahead of you (both ways), otherwise learn how to switch between regular and high beams. It's common courtesy.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[aevan]

Which is why Canadians never ever hit racoons, deer, moose, the odd bear, cats, dogs, etc, no matter the hilly/bendy terrain. Imagine if Canada was actually filled with PEOPLE!!

How'd you install the highbeams to get the angle to cover a sharp turn and kid darting across the road?

*also lives rural canada, and joy the fun of idiot teens on a midnight walk dressed in head-to-toe black. the small towns and cities around though have street lights all over

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There would be arguments concerning public safety (and Lord only knows how many lawsuits would spring from such a move), but I could totally get behind shutting off, say, 50% of all street lights after a certain hour (say 10pm?), and in small-enough towns, shut 'em all off entirely (I think a lot of small towns do that anyway to save on the power bills).

As someone who used to walk home every night after 2nd shift and living in a small-enough-town, I can't really get behind this. Mostly because small-enough-towns rarely have good street light coverage in the first place. Generally the worst offenders are peoples own lights precisely because of said lack of street lights. Ie, you're not going to actually solve the problem that way. Or, more precisely, the best approach would be to simply not have lights on the seedier streets with owners who won't spend the money to light their own sidewalk (and who often leave tree branches for weeks on them). So, it's actually already mostly a solved problem.

Oh, and of course the safest place in town at night? The park. Ridiculous levels of lighting. :)

PS - I appreciate the desire to allow for star gazing, but there's a reason we have towns/cities and always visible lighting conditions. You "pay" for it by living in more urban areas and you are "rewarded" for it as well. I can definitely see with actual cities wanting a few "dead light" zones for stargazing (right beside the police + hospital + fire department if you're so worried about such things), but even on foot I could walk from the center of town to sufficiently close to city limits and get a wonderful view of the sky in 30 minutes. And plenty of times just incidentally I saw more of stars walking home than I ever got out of astronomy class. So, finally I can actually grasp constellations as a thing instead of desperately trying to make out a few dots.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[DontBeAMoran]

idiot teens on a midnight walk dressed in head-to-toe black

Darwin award contenders.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[mjr167]

Small children shouldn't be running down the road unsupervised after dark :) I realize that in winter the sun never actually rises in the north, so we also have things like flashlights and reflective clothing. And don't run around in all black at night. Stupid is a capitol offense.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the park actually safer or do you just think it is because it's well-lit?

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time a small town or village does that, guess what happens? The burglars, thieves and muggers come out. They even stick to those bits of the street where every other street light has been switched off to save money.

So put IR sensors on the street lights so they come on when there's someone around. The "burglars, thieves and muggers" won't like the way a pool of light follows them around and shows where they are.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[crunchygranola]

At least have them shut off after midnight.

Simply redesigning them (and other outside illumination lighting) would be a huge gain. A bit less than 10% of light hitting the ground in an urban area gets scattered back up into the sky. So if the lights are designed to shine light on the ground only (no light being sent horizontally, where it just creates glare, or worse directly into the sky) there would be a large reduction in light pollution.

LEDs can help a lot here since they are inherently directional, it takes effort to make them spew light in other directions. But light makers are willing to provide them to the market since people want to buy lights that resemble lights they are used to.

Similarly regulating sign lighting so that you don't have bright lights at the bottom of a sign pointing straight-up, and regulating the use of light as a form of advertising and promotion. A lot of commercial light use is abusive, using brilliant light-emitting signage throwing light everywhere.

On highways with light traffic late at night "smart" lights can be implemented that turn off when there are no cars for them to aid.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[crunchygranola]

Is the park actually safer or do you just think it is because it's well-lit?

This is a very important point. People assume that lights provide security, but the evidence for this is at best very weak. Most studies that have been done (research on this is limited) have found lighting increases the crime rate!

And so you see completely empty areas that are closed and fenced off at night brightly lit for "security", and remote service buildings, water towers, etc. with lights on them for no benefit whatsoever. It is similar to car alarms. If you hear a car alarm go off do you rush out to frustate the possible car thief? No one does this. Everyone just ignores it. Similarly unless there is someone actually watching the light deters no one, it just helps the criminals case the joint and spot potential victims to attack.

Everyone wants "security" so bright lights go up everywhere.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[tquasar]

My sister lives in a remote rural area in northern California. She enjoyed dark skies 'till people bought nearby property and put up sodium lights that lit up most of her property and shined in the windows of her house.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely the safety that lighting provides. With lighting you can possibly see someone undesirable or stalking you from 50 yards away instead of when they sneak up on you and are within 30 feet before you even realize they are there.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pull those earbuds out and you will hear them coming too, no lights required.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to have a decent (8") telescope when I lived in central oregon but when I had to return to the Beaverton area I sold it - too much light pollution.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can open up your wallet and buy a $20 flashlight.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[thogard]

Public safety? I suspect bad public lighting is killing more people than it is saving already. Street lights are the main reason why the most common drug to treat breast cancer doesn't work in about 10% of people. It turns out that humans need about 2 hours of real dark per night or else there can be deadly consequences. There are also strong links between light pollution and prostate and skin cancer.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a built up area and our street somehow escaped getting any street lights, its great not having these things shine in the windows at night (why cant street light designers put shades on them to direct the light down, and block mostly useless horizontal traveling light that just goes into peoples windows?)

Only time it would be nice to have some street lights is during winter when I leave for work in the dark and get home in the dark - since I walk a short distance down our street to a bus stop on the main road.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember as a kid going on night time fishing trips to the beach in a far flung place miles from any light, we'd lay on the beach above the high tide line and watch the skies and marvel at fast moving satellites. Now living in western Washington (state) I do miss the night sky - winter is nearly always overcast, the light pollution can easily be seen from Seattle 30 miles north.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants "security" so bright lights go up everywhere.

As the original poster, I'll actually comment at this point. I originally made the comment very tongue and cheek precisely because of all the supposed risks of "alone in the park at night". But answering the question honesty, the park is probably one of the safest places because being so well lit it's a lot less likely I'll trip and fall. Although as others point out, better lighting also makes it much more probable you'll spot someone from a distance sooner.

A flashlight as suggested, as others point out, only makes you more of a target and makes you too reliant upon something that could fail on you. Better to have a well remembered path and know where the generally broken sidewalks, missing sidewalks, branches or trash cans are, etc. Again, also, while the street lights aren't everywhere, there's still several paths that there's a good deal of lighting and a lot of private lighting does a good job at various other places. The core part, of course, is remembering the path and being quick on your feet to recover.

PS - As far as another poster mentioned about earbuds, for years I didn't wear earbuds in part because of a certain degree of fear of this (well, mostly cars, actually). In the end, though, you just need to keep the volume down low enough and use your vision a lot more. Again, caution is the real key. After all, a sufficiently rainy or windy day and your hearing is also pretty useless until something like a car is near on top of you in the dark if sound is all you're going on. So, it was never really earbuds that made me feel unsafe. Just the many times I wasn't cautious enough or drivers weren't. Thankfully I never got hurt or even really near missed.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya gotta love how considerate those Democratic Republics are.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[jouassou]

It turns out that humans need about 2 hours of real dark per night or else there can be deadly consequences.

That's why you buy proper bedroom curtains that are thick enough to block the light.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[drinkypoo]

How's about we just point them down, and dim them after midnight? Having them turned on is a public safety issue.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

"track"

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because flashlights are so good at lighting up things AROUND you. With a flashlight YOU are more visible, not as much the person trying to sneak up on you.

Flashlights are great, but for this purpose... not so.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[coofercat]

Most street lights are essentially ancient - there are still plenty of sodium and other lights around. These were the best we could do about 50 years ago, but nowadays we could do so much better.

I'll side-step what we need to do on motorways and big road junctions - flood lighting may well be the best thing to do there, although I'm sure we can do that without sending so much of it upwards.

Town and city streets need to be lit for pedestrians. Cars have their own lights, and apart from a bit of extra here and there, can manage just fine without too much more light. With LED technology, we must surely be able to make smaller lights that only really illuminate the pavement and not the houses, the road and the sky above. I will concede that the cost of converting to such a scheme is pretty high, and if you get it wrong then you look like a money-wasting idiot, so the uptake is likely to be slow.

I'm sure there must be lighting experts and architects that have 'reimagined' how you'd build a street now, using all the latest knowledge and technology. Sadly, here in the UK at least, we're still seeing councils approving the same old shit housing and just 'turning the handle' to pop out estates with their slightly windy streets, and super-compact houses just like they have been for decades. Innovation will be slow.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[coofercat]

Mods should be ashamed of up-voting such an incredibly lazy comment. It's a 'trendy' meme here on /., but anyone can say those words, but how about demanding that they also throw in some opposing facts.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[MoarSauce123]

Some places do that, either permanently or only when no movement is detected in the vicinity. I spent some time in a small village in Germany and after 11 PM the street lights were turned off except at intersections. That saved a lot of electricity and money. Several places now have street lights with motion detectors so that they only turn on if a pedestrian or a car comes along. That is a good compromise to save power without sacrificing safety and security. Another option is to dim the lights down when no movement is detected.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[sjames]

Once you've been in the dark for a few minutes your eyes adjust (unless they keep getting dazzled by 'safety' lighting) so that you can see much further. When 'safety' lights keep you half blind, there are lots of dark shadows available for muggers to lay in wait for you in.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[Anonymous Coward]

My new meme for the day : street lights cause cancer

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[sjames]

Ga. Tech has a long running experiment going where only a percentage of the lighting is on at any given time. BUT, it's randomized. Any given light could come on at any time.

Or, turn all the lights off and dark adapted eyes will see the muggers 100 yards away.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[sjames]

As long as the sensors only connect directly to the light, it's no big deal.

Re:Good can we ban all street lights now?

[No Longer an AC]

Back in 2010 or so Colorado Springs turned off 1/3 of their streetlights to save money.

People started stealing the wire.

https://www.politico.com/magaz...

Take the streetlights. Turning them off had saved the city about $1.25 million. What had not made the national news stories was what had happened while those lights were off. Copper thieves, emboldened by the opportunity to work without fear of electrocution, had worked overtime scavenging wire. Some, the City Council learned, had even dressed up as utility workers and pried open the boxes at the base of streetlights in broad daylight. Keeping the lights off might have saved some money in the short term, but the cost to fix what had been stolen ran to some $5 million.

I LIKE THE NITE LIFE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I WANT TO BOOGIE!

Re:I LIKE THE NITE LIFE!

[Chris Mattern]

I WANT TO BOOGIE!

On the disco 'round, oh yea?

I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[ZorinLynx]

The street lights on the road behind my house were damaged by hurricane Irma and still have not been fixed, and I'm loving it. The darkness outside at night is beautiful and serene; I hate the ugly yellow-orange glow of sodium lighting.

I wish people would appreciate darkness at night. And even then, "security" lighting can be done so that an area is softly lit without blasting bright light in all directions.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[MightyYar]

The sodium lights are all steadily being replaced by LED.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[RailRide]

New York City is in the midst of a sodium-to-LED street-lamp upgrade. I was going to get a before-and-after photo of how my block looked at night when I saw the closest main thoroughfare upgraded, but the DOT beat me to it.

The lighting is very directional. So much so that the sidewalk on my side of the street (opposite the poles) looks like it's lit by spotlights (the brightness trails off rapidly as one moves farther back but the opposite sidewalk is mostly in darkness by comparison. The commercial strips on the main streets have had additional short-armed fixtures installed on the opposite sides of the poles to light up the sidewalks, but it remains to be seen if anything will be done about the residential side streets thus affected

Even so, riding above these streets on elevated subway lines makes them look dim by comparison since almost none of the light is visible once you're above the fixture heads. It'll be interesting to see how this makes nighttime cloud cover look after the first snowstorm turns the ground into a reflective surface.

---PCJ

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, go from ugly orange to bright white, still it's not needed in most places, like along miles and miles of roadway/freeway. intersections or off/on ramps sure, but miles of single direction traffic on a road, these lights need to be removed, not replaced by something else.

i'm so happy we moved further out, the orange glow of the cities 30 miles away are barely visible now and I can see the milky way again. not as clearly as where i grew up which was a couple hundred miles from any large city, but still nice to see again, along with more than just a small handful of stars.

city kids lose so much and gain nothing from growing up in a city.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[dave3138]

I've noticed that most of the new/replaced LED streetlights in my area seem to scatter _much_ less light upward than the sodium vapor lights before them. Could just be the styles that our city/county are implementing. Many of them have such a sharp downware angle that I can't tell they're on until I get within a few hundred yards of them on the highway.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[clovis]

Have you ever seen the mercury or sodium lights that constantly turn on and off? It takes a while for them to cycle and they gradually brighten on and off.
I'm told that bird poop is bad for the now-it's-dark sensor.

I've now seen two large-array LED street lights near where I live that have failed the same way. They're cycling about once every 3 seconds of full off and then to full on for a fraction of a second. It's like looking at a flash bulb going off every three seconds - total darkness, FLASH, total darkness.
I was stuck in traffic sitting under one doing this, and I hope it doesn't become common because people will start shooting at these.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't poop on the sensor for the sodium lamps. That's the bulb going bad and overheating the ballast. It overheats and shuts down, then when it's cool it turns on only to eventually shut down again. For the LEDs it sounds like the power supply is failing; the capacitors will hold up the voltage long enough to get a flash out, but once they're drained enough the supply can't keep up with the required power, shuts down, and tries to start back up again.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

LED lamps became accessible here (not the US). So I thought about using less power to lighten my house -- I was already using compact fluorescent lamps.

Some time later I noticed the water from my kitchen tap looked like having "lumps" or globs of water. I use a little tap adapter to convert the water flow to small thin water jets, thus I thought it might have something to do with that.

Alas, it was the LED lighting: it seems it blinks at a low enough frequency to result in a strobo effect. This was also noticeable with my son's silver-like hand spinner.

I'm now investigating whether that flickering could lead to ailments (e.g. headaches) or discomfort (e.g. while watching TV). For the moment, I got careful about places which require good lighting (for writing, for example) and partially returned to CFLs (which have mercury and that creates problems to recycle them).

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighting fixture designers were working with the Dark Sky initiative to cut down on uplight even before LEDs came on the scene. LEDs are very directional, which means that it's even easier to do with LED than with sodium and metal halide before it. Technically, most LED fixtures can be expected to send no light upward (except for the light reflected off of its surroundings).

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[MightyYar]

CFLs also flicker - that's how they work. LEDs at least can be made steady if you use a good one with a decent capacitor.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern CFLs flicker at a very high rate (in the kHz range, which at least makes it non-apparent), while LED flickering can be tested with some simple devices (like those I've mentioned). I therefore suspect they might flicker at low rates... like 60Hz, for example.

To be honest I cannot say I see that directly, but I wonder what effects it might have on human beings.

There is this page in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamps_and_health

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[kencurry]

The street lights on the road behind my house were damaged by hurricane Irma and still have not been fixed, and I'm loving it. The darkness outside at night is beautiful and serene; I hate the ugly yellow-orange glow of sodium lighting.

I wish people would appreciate darkness at night. And even then, "security" lighting can be done so that an area is softly lit without blasting bright light in all directions.

sincerely,
The Island of Puerto Rico

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[bugs2squash]

Maybe they should flicker all the lighting at 60Hz, 50% duty cycle synchronized to the city power and let people buy glasses that can be set to pass light when the LEDs are off and block it when they are on. Then they need never see any light pollution.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[MightyYar]

Again, not all LEDs do this - just LEDs with crappy driver circuitry. LEDs are DC, so they don't flicker at all unless you do so deliberately. I have some of these flickery LEDs in my bathroom, because the "filament" bulbs look nice since the driver fits into the little candelabra base. But the penalty I pay is a roughly 60Hz flicker that is quite pronounced, as all they do is rectify the AC and then have some kind of a LED driver - no room for a capacitor at all. If your bulb has room for a full bridge rectifier, decent capacitor, and a constant current driver you shouldn't have any measurable "flicker" no matter how nice an instrument you have (obviously you'd be able to see some slight periodic variation, just not "flicker").

Dimming is another whole kettle of fish.

Re: I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Miamicanes]

IMHO, LED street lights are *worse* than high-pressure sodium. Especially in areas like rural freeway interchanges that are lit up like a stadium, but surrounded by inky darkness. Bluish LED lights destroy your night vision for a minute or two once you're back in the dark. Orange sodium lights aren't nearly as bad. And because they *aren't* as directional, there's a more gradual drop-off in brightness as you drive away.

With LEDs, it's like, "Darkness... darkness... BAM! Blinding blue-white light. BAM! Pitch black, with a few seconds of night-blindness to boot." With HPS lights, it's more gradual, and the light doesn't affect night vision as badly.

Re: I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[Miamicanes]

The problem is, there's NO WAY for consumers to reliably know how badly LED lights flicker without buying and testing them directly. There's no "gold-star seal for bulbs with DC driver and adequate capacitor size" to distinguish them from cheaper designs that flicker at 120hz or 60hz.

Cree bulbs are reportedly among the WORST-flickering... many of their bulbs exhibit BLATANT 120hz flicker that can be seen with the naked eye... no need to test with a solar cell + oscilloscope, because you can see it directly.

Phillips is a mixed bag. Some of their bulbs have flicker-free DC drivers, but it's mostly luck of the draw... apparently, they're yet another company that thinks it's totally acceptable to change designs & components without changing the UPC or SKU, so one batch's 5-star reviews won't necessarily apply to the next batch.

Re:I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[shilly]

City kids gain loads from growing up in a city: typically, this includes better education, better healthcare, better access to culture, better transport infrastructure etc. But of course, they lose some things too.

And almost all of humanity has lost the nightly experience of the numinous that our ancestors had.

Re: I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[MightyYar]

You can find online reviews of many bulbs, but the strategy I've been (mostly) successful with is to look at the claimed lifetime on the name-brand bulbs. They generally fall into two buckets, 10 and 20 year. The 10 year bulbs are clearly over-driven and lots of corners cut, the 20-year are generally properly designed and more conservative. But honestly, the flicker doesn't bother me so I only notice it in places with running water. My $60 wet-rated recessed shower LED flickers, for instance - so cost clearly isn't a guide. On the other hand, the filament bulbs that I use for decorative purposes (mostly outside, but also in one bathroom) flicker for sure (and I one of them apart to find no electrolytic capacitor at all!), but I only notice it in the bathroom because it freeze-frames your pee and the kids picked up on that.

Re: I wish more people would appreciate darkness

[MightyYar]

Oh, and once you buy them, there's a quick-and-dirty trick you can use to check for flicker: put your smartphone camera into continuous mode (on Apple I think you just hold down the shutter button) and take a screenful of photos. When you review the thumbnails all on one screen, it will be very clear if the bulb is flickering on and off or if it is steady.

Energy efficient lighting is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

With the advent of CFL and now LED lighting, it has never been more cost effective to push back the night. This will only become a larger problem as more advances are made. Humans are creatures of daylight, why would we not modify our environment to suit our preference? We've been doing it for centuries.

Re:Energy efficient lighting is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The article summary fails to point out the increase in light at night is directly due to the adoption of "environmentally friendly" LED lighting. Turns out when you decrease the energy cost of lighting, people just increase the amount of lighting they use until the cost levels.

Economics is environmentalism's worst enemy.

Re:Energy efficient lighting is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

With the move to LED lighting that is dim able, the solution might be to have the LEDs come on full brightness just at sundown, and slowly dim down over the course of 3-4 hours to a point the lighting is still usable but still allows for some darkness. This would allow for decent brightness during the early night hours when people are still active, then dim down to just provide a bare minimum of light the remaining hours of the night. Saves energy, reduces light pollution.

You're going to get as much traction on banning

[Anonymous Coward]

light pollution as you are trying to ban infant male circumcision. You can have study after study showing it's bad, how it doesn't actually make you safer, etc, but no one will bother.

I blame the media for telling us how to think and for schools not teaching us how.

Re:You're going to get as much traction on banning

[Anonymous Coward]

And I blame human beings for having to be tought to think and not knowing how to from birth, despite these 200 billion neurons in those ginormous heads of theirs.

Proving once again that human intelligence is an error of nature and an evolutionary dead-end.

YOU CAN HELP

[Anonymous Coward]

The good news is that light pollution, unlike many other forms of pollution, is reversible and each one of us can make a difference! Just being aware that light pollution is a problem is not enough; the need is for action. You can start by minimizing the light from your own home at night. You can do this by following these simple steps.

Open the door
get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur

Fear of the dark

[DaMattster]

I think humans have a very natural fear of the dark. This might explain why outdoor lighting is increasing. We fear becoming victims as our primary sense is sight. Our ancestors fear becoming prey at night.

Re:Fear of the dark

[Penguinisto]

Odd thing is, a healthy set of eyes can adjust to most conditions at night - at least enough to avoid tripping on anything. Under a full moon, you can see pretty much anything you need to (as long as you're not in the deep woods or anything). You just have to sit still in the dark until your eyes adjust.

Re:Fear of the dark

[allcoolnameswheretak]

And under a new moon or when clouded, you can't even see your own hand in front of your face.
No amount of adaptation helps if there is practically no light to adapt to.
It's a rare occurrence for those of us living in developed countries to have no light outside, as usually there is always some kind of light source relatively nearby, even if it is the diffuse light coming from a nearby city. But in the real wilderness with no civilization nearby, when it gets dark it is really, really dark.

Re:Fear of the dark

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's true. But in order to make itself feel more comfortable, mankind is slowly becoming cocooned, and yet afraid of EVERYTHING.

Re:Fear of the dark

[Anonymous Coward]

How well we see in darkness differs greatly from person to person. I once took a long walk with a friend through a wooded area and we had no lights on a clouded night. Still I could see the outlines of the path and even the roots sticking up. My friends was completely blind and had to be led through that area.

Also, given that your night vision is disturbed by any light and the speed vehicles are traveling at, relying on night vision is not an option for drivers.

Re:Fear of the dark

[mjwx]

Odd thing is, a healthy set of eyes can adjust to most conditions at night - at least enough to avoid tripping on anything. Under a full moon, you can see pretty much anything you need to (as long as you're not in the deep woods or anything). You just have to sit still in the dark until your eyes adjust.

Trying to put this nicely, you've never seen the full dark.

As you've elluded to, the moon has phases, at the full moon the moon fully illuminated by the sun which reflects back to earth, here there is enough light for someone with good eyes to reliably see objects. At the new moon, it's entirely in the planets shadow, so very little light is reflected, this is when it is properly dark and you definately wont be able to see because there is not enough light for your eyes to operate.

The problem you have is that in populated centres we need street lights to prevent collisions and injuries. Out in the sticks there is less traffic so the risks are negligable. If you disklike the amount of lights in the urban enviroment, move out to the middle of nowhere... but you'll have to give up all the city comforts to do that.

Re:Fear of the dark

[thegarbz]

Moon? We attend astronomy gatherings regularly. After about an hour you don't need a moon. Start light alone can help you navigate without running into things or even starting from the path.

Re:Fear of the dark

[thegarbz]

I think humans have a very natural fear of the dark. This might explain why outdoor lighting is increasing.

No we don't fear dark. We fear preconceptions. Such as that criminals hide in the dark or that someone may sue is for not providing them light. Very few people are afraid of the dark itself.

Re:Fear of the dark

[Distortions]

I've been able to see the ground and walk with no moon. It takes 30-45 minutes of dark adaptation.

Re:Fear of the dark

[Distortions]

Yep. I routinely drive up to 9000 feet with my telescope and I can walk around just fine by starlight only.

Re:Fear of the dark

[sjames]

So one the rare occasion where there is actually not enough light and you are walking on uneven terrain, use a flashlight.

Beam Angle

[Thelasko]

If you want to add exterior lighting to your home, there is pretty much just "flood" style lights on the market. These lights shine at a very wide angle, meaning most of it is wasted. Even if you want to buy better light fixtures, they are very hard to find.

Re:Beam Angle

[denbesten]

If you want to add exterior lighting to your home, there is pretty much just "flood" style lights on the market. These lights shine at a very wide angle, meaning most of it is wasted. Even if you want to buy better light fixtures, they are very hard to find.

You might check out "pathway lamps", "coach lamps", "BBQ Lamps", "step lights" and "Umbrella lamps". They all do an efficient job of lighting just the needed area. My big-box store has all of them (as does Amazon), including many in solar versions.

Flood lights really are only needed while looking out the window to investigate a strange occurrence. If light or energy efficiency is needed, you are using them incorrectly.

Re:Beam Angle

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, low level lighting should be used along foot path areas. Save the flood lights for motion detected lighting. With it motion activated it alerts you that there is possibly someone or something where it should not be at. And in the case you need to bring the lights on to investigate something, most motion activated lights i've been aware of have a mode where if you flick the light switch off and back on quickly they will immediately turn on and stay on regardless of the motion detector. Usually you reset them to motion detect mode by turning them off for 5-10 seconds and then flipping the switch back on and they should either stay off, or turn back on but then auto shut off after the typical motion detect time out period.

Re:Beam Angle

[Thelasko]

I really don't want to dig up my yard to install those options. That would be extremely expensive.

watch out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our alien observers are excited by this new bioluminescence. I'm too lazy to login.

Telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

As a telescope owner...it's not hard to agree with the premise.

I used to see the Milky Way pretty clearly where I lived as a kid. I still live in the same area 40+ years later, and I can confidently say it's been decades I've seen even a slight hint of it.

Since my current neighbor has brought in a flood light that he keeps on all night, I've stopped bothering with getting my telescope out. I only wish I would've had it back when I was a kid.

Dark Skies initiate - Nevada / Lake Tahoe

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the greatest things that some communities have been adopting since 2000 in the regional planning like the 2000 master plan for humboldt county nevada based on the Flagstaff Arizona master plan within is the dark skies initiative.

cap those parking lights, no need to broadcast into the sky the light, when it wants and needs to be directed downwards, ... so the walmarts of the world should cap their parking lights and redirect the light and focus downward...

lake tahoe is part of that goal.. keep tahoe blue.. dark skies please so we can see the stars too...

in 2006 storey county nevada we adopted the same through the planning commission... yep.. my idea... from the washoe storey conversation district...

good stuff.... its the same cost.. just need to think ahead...

Ever since the invention of Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandpa Caveman says, artificial light has been spoiling the night ever since those darn kids invented Fire.

Re:Ever since the invention of Fire

[crunchygranola]

Nah. It is entirely due to electric lighting.

I calculated once how much light was put out in London during the gas light era. It turns out the total number of lumens emitted to light the largest and most brightly lit city in the world at the time (four million people) is equal to the amount of light used to illuminate one football field for a night game.

Re:Ever since the invention of Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

"You kids, put out that fire! I'm trying to sleep! In this cave, we go to bed when it's dark!"

Seriously, do you have any elderly relatives. You know the kind who wake with the dawn and go to sleep at sundown. As soon as they reach a certain age, they find religion and live every day in God's sunlight.

Re:Ever since the invention of Fire

[Strider-]

I calculated once how much light was put out in London during the gas light era. It turns out the total number of lumens emitted to light the largest and most brightly lit city in the world at the time (four million people) is equal to the amount of light used to illuminate one football field for a night game.

As I mentioned in another thread, I work with a camp that operates in a wilderness area. The skies are spectacular, and we've been very careful about our outdoor lighting. It's highly effective, but very dim, all done with fixtures that have tight cutoffs and what not.

Anyhow, a number of years ago, during the Perseid Meteor Shower (which was particularly strong that year), we mysteriously had a power outage for about an hour. People were wanding around wondering what was going on, and those of us there were just "sit down, look up, and enjoy the show". What had actually happened is that someone had bribed the guy who runs our (privately owned/operated) power plant to head out there and shut it down for an hour. It was worth the case of beer.

Introducing people to dark skies

[Strider-]

I work with an organization that operates at a wilderness site, some 50+ miles from the nearest population center. We ourselves are very careful with our outdoor lighting, providing just enough illumination to be safe, and no more than that. As such, our skies are absolutely incredible.

One of the things I love to do is if I run into someone new on a clear night is to basically go "So.... have you looked up?" in so many cases, they haven't yet, and are simply blown away. It's really quite sad how many people have never seen the Milky Way with their own eyes. The amusing thing, though, is that there are so many stars that it is actually rather difficult to pick out the normal constellations.

The thing that really pisses me off, though, is the people who insist on walking everywhere with a headlamp or a flashlight. Just let your eyes dark adjust; after a minute or two, even starlight is enough to safely make your way around on well maintained roads/paths.

Re:Introducing people to dark skies

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that really pisses me off, though, is the people who insist on walking everywhere with a headlamp or a flashlight. Just let your eyes dark adjust; after a minute or two, even starlight is enough to safely make your way around on well maintained roads/paths.

Me too! And don't get me started on the fools that carry umbrellas! Don't they know that rain is only water? The cowards! What about the EDC knife jerkoffs! Who do they think they are? What about the arrogant idiots that keep all their keys together on a keychain? Morons! And the conceal/carry crowd... well, nevermind, I suppose a handgun really is something no one can or should do without, especially in the dark, because crime is so ubiquitous, and you never know when needlessly killing something, I mean hunting, might spring up, let alone tyranny. But you're so right, the flashlight people seem to be so out of tune with the dark, like they never once gave it any thought.

brighter led lights aren't helping

[Anonymous Coward]

because they are not diffused properly, have the wrong color (pure and harsh white), and they still don't put hats on the street lights and other outdoor lighting to cut costs and keep light from going up where it does no good.

Forward to the MATRIX

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who want it Hardcore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwKJsRU6V_s

Childhood Memories

[RhettLivingston]

One of my earliest memories is laying in the back window area of a '68 Pontiac staring up at the Milky Way while traveling. Of course, allowing this today would likely get parents arrested for felony child endangerment. :-)

I live on the east coast. Even during the power outage following Hurricane Irma, there were still enough lights around that the Milky Way was only faintly visible.

The last time I truly saw the Milky Way in all of its glory was during a camping trip in the Badlands. I highly recommend it.

I wonder at the effects of all of this light. I don't think that I am ever in the dark long enough for the chemicals to gather in my eyes to activate my night vision. I can always see some color.

And what of the societal effects? Could our reduced interests in space be at least partly due to generations of children growing up who have never truly seen the stars in the way earlier ones did?

If we can't ban it, perhaps we could at least switch to amber light that allows night vision to activate.

It is a loss worthy of mourning.

Re:Childhood Memories

[DerekLyons]

And what of the societal effects? Could our reduced interests in space be at least partly due to generations of children growing up who have never truly seen the stars in the way earlier ones did?

What little public interest there was in space was a result of "beeaaat the rooskies!" propaganda and paranoia. Once the "Reds" were beaten, interest waned. The visibility of the sky or the lack thereof had nothing to do with it.
 

The last time I truly saw the Milky Way in all of its glory was during a camping trip in the Badlands. I highly recommend it.

Though it's on the outer fringes, much of the Badlands are still within light polluted area. You've never truly seen the sky until you've seen it from well out in the ocean, hundreds of miles from land.

Re:Childhood Memories

[sjames]

The idea of space travel predated the "rooskies" becoming the bad guys. It predates the Russian Revolution.

Re:Childhood Memories

[DerekLyons]

True, but completely fucking irrelevant.

Re:Childhood Memories

[sjames]

It certainly suggests that interest in space travel wasn't solely the desire to "beat the rooskies".

Re:Childhood Memories

[DerekLyons]

Certainly. But it ignores two realities... First, that period predates the actual doing anything in space. Second, it never was a very widespread interest. The only time in which interest in space was anything resembling widespread was during the Space Race.

None of this correlates to any degree with the spread of night lighting.

Re:Childhood Memories

[sjames]

So the many cartoons, comics, works of fiction, etc were all released generally to entertain a very few?

Robert Goddard did his work well before the russians were the bad guys (he didn't even live to see that come about).

It is true that interest swelled immensely once Sputnik was launched, mostly because that proved that the daydreams could actually be realized.

I can't say with certainty that loss of the stars has resulted in loss of interest in space, but it would certainly be interesting to see a study correlating interest in space w/ visibility of the stars.

Re:Childhood Memories

[DerekLyons]

So the many cartoons, comics, works of fiction, etc were all released generally to entertain a very few?

Doesn't matter whether they were or weren't, we're discussing interest in space not interest in "cartoons, comics, works of fiction, etc".
 

Robert Goddard did his work well before the russians were the bad guys (he didn't even live to see that come about).

Yet another irrelevancy.
 

It is true that interest swelled immensely once Sputnik was launched, mostly because that proved that the daydreams could actually be realized.

Mostly because of propaganda and marketing. And even that couldn't sustain interest once the stunt was over and men on the moon became yesterday's news.
 

I can't say with certainty that loss of the stars has resulted in loss of interest in space, but it would certainly be interesting to see a study correlating interest in space w/ visibility of the stars.

And we're right back where we started - the part where you don't grasp there never any significant or widespread interest to start with.

Having come full circle, it's abundantly clear you have no idea what you're talking about and no interest in correcting that lack. I'm done here.

Re:Childhood Memories

[sjames]

Anything that suggests you might be less that perfectly correct is irrelevant, GOTCHA!

Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Snotnose]

Some 20 years ago I bought a house that had pretty dark skies. So I spent some coin on a 3" refractor, it worked really well so I got a 10" cassegrain. Got about 2 years of great viewing. The kids enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, the neighbors enjoyed it. Then a high school a mile away built lights for the football field, and I lost half my dark sky. That sucked ass, especially as I was paying taxes to pay the electric bill to light up my back yard when that was the last thing I wanted.

About a year later someone built what I called The Taj Mahal down the hill, maybe 1/4 away from me. The front face fronted both the street it was built on, and my house. They lit that fucker up like Oscar night in Hollywood. Every fucking night. I could damn near read in my back yard by the light from that goddamned building.

So, scopes went into storage, about once a year we'd head out to the Anza Borrego desert (La Casa del Zorro used to rock, but haven't been there since they closed and opened under new management).

Someone explain to me why a high school stadium needs to light up my back yard 1 mile away, and why a company needs to light up a closed building after hours like it was the fucking temple of all gods.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone explain to me why a high school stadium needs to light up my back yard 1 mile away, and why a company needs to light up a closed building after hours like it was the fucking temple of all gods.

Football scouts need to be able to see the players so they can can pick who will go pro and earn more per game than you earn in a lifetime. The company needs to impress investors who control more capital than you will ever see in a lifetime.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Most communities hold public hearings on proposed development projects. You gotta go to those that affect you, which means keeping up by reading the local papers and (often free) community newspapers. And then ask questions and make yourself heard, talk to your city or state rep.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Mal-2]

A football field (American, Canadian, Australian, or the Rest Of The World football, they all work here) has to be lit not just at field level, but as high as the ball can be expected to reach during play, and the ball has to be at least partially lit from below when it's in the air so it can be seen. This means angling the lights upward or at least letting their natural spread cover much of the sky.

A baseball can get 200 feet or more in the air. The lights don't track the ball, so every cubic inch of the sky over the ballpark (up 200+ feet) has to be lit constantly. I suppose it could be turned down some between innings, but incandescent lighting doesn't care much for thermal cycling and the standard practice for sports lighting is really built around the era of incandescent lighting, so the upward lights stay on.

Like it or not, society as a whole has accepted that playing outdoor games at night (and simulating daylight) is a good idea, and stadiums that are visible from the moon are a consequence.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[TeknoHog]

Interesting! There's a football field near where I live, and I've always wondered why they need such lighting as to glare straight into my eyes when I'm a mile away across the lake.

Still, there must be a lot of energy/money wasted, compared to indoor alternatives. Also during the winter, the same field is used for ice hockey etc. so it has a cooling system to maintain ice when it's near or above zero, which happens quite commonly here in central Finland. I imagine it uses quite a lot of power when it's a few degrees above zero and raining, so that would be another win for an indoor ice rink. OTOH, watching the jocks suffer in bad weather is kind of rewarding.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone explain to me why a high school stadium needs to light up my back yard 1 mile away

Well, they need lights to be able to see. A better question would be why are they playing all through the night? Seems wasteful to have the lights on when no games are on.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[TeknoHog]

A baseball can get 200 feet or more in the air. The lights don't track the ball

Hmm... why not? Hockey pucks were tracked via IR emitters in the mid-90s. I guess a straightforward version would make the ball glow with visible light, so they wouldn't need any upwards lighting at all.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Mal-2]

Because then they wouldn't be made of just cork, string, and leather, and baseball is extremely traditional. Also the impact of bat on ball is much more severe than the impact of stick on puck since the puck stays in contact with (and is accelerated by) the stick for a much longer time. Pucks also have a preferred orientation where baseballs do not, but this probably helps more with the actual tracking than it does with keeping the equipment functioning.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Mal-2]

Going indoors would indeed be a solution to the light pollution problem, but in order to take an outdoor game indoors and still have spectator seating means building stadiums that cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the same capacity without the roof. That's why it is only done when other conditions warrant it, such as unpredictable or extreme weather being common to the region, and sometimes not even then. Also, it is difficult to grow a natural grass surface in a stadium without a retractable roof. In Phoenix, they get around this problem by putting the field itself on rails, and roll it outside when not in use to soak up sunlight.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[Mal-2]

Also, hockey doesn't cover nearly as much space as football of any sort. Here is a hockey rink inside a football stadium. Putting a building around a hockey rink is quite a common endeavor, especially in places where the ambient temperature would generally not be conducive to a game played on ice. Such an arena is also conducive to basketball, futsal, handball, and several other games specifically tailored to the size of a hockey rink. However, these are not the same games traditionally played outdoors -- basketball has been considered an indoor game from the beginning, even though it is frequently played outdoors, and most other arena games are modifications of outdoor games.

Re:Wasted my $2,000 telescope investment

[toddestan]

That's the same thing I'm wondering. Around here, they only run the lights if they have a reason to. So usually 1-2 nights a week, and almost always shut off by midnight. Given that the lights have to be well in to the tens of kilowatts, burning them all the time is going to add up, as well as reducing the lifespan of the bulbs.

An anecdote...

[djbckr]

I live near Seattle - about 20 miles out. On clear nights you can see the stars relatively well. I must have gotten used to what I see because I didn't think the light pollution was all that bad.

Then I went to see the eclipse earlier this year. I specifically chose a spot that was "in the middle of nowhere" (which as it turns out, about 10,000 other people had the same idea, but no matter). I set up camp and settled in for the evening.

My GOD the stars were brilliant! I laid awake most of the night mesmerized and amazed at what I was seeing.

Yeah - people don't know what they are missing.

Re:An anecdote...

[Strider-]

Similar experience here regarding the eclipse. A couple of buddies and I putted on out to the Salmon Challis National Forest in Idaho for the eclipse. We finally found a spot to setup camp at 11pm, and the first thing that we noticed after shutting down the Westfalia was... oh my God the stars are incredible. I've spent a lot of time in the area around Lake Chelan, and that is good dark sky territory (the Milky Way is quite obvious there), but it had nothing on that spot in Idaho.

The only time I've seen better is when I've been out crewing a yacht in the open ocean. When it's calm, the infinity of the sky above you is mind blowing, and the trail of phosphorescence behind you is stunning.

Your typical person just doesn't get what you can see when it's truly dark.

Since when has the goal been to copy North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

30 years ago, we dreamed of progress. Of making things. Of growing. Human growth, success, happiness, and wealth were the goal.

Nowadays, North Korea is raised up as the example of humanity at its "finest", and the goal seems to be human misery, human death, and eventual annihilation -- all in the interest of making sure that we leave the earth "natural"

Milky Way timelapse clips, pollution map

[vlueboy]

I am glad to see comments about the Milky Way's beauty, which I only experienced once on an country road trip in college.

For slashdotters who haven't had the chance of running into it, here are a few minutes of timelapse clips of the Milky Way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Astrophotography posts on reddit may have more info if you're curious about implementation, and in my limited knowledge you'd need good DSLR lenses, software post-processing and rotation mounts to follow stars and planets well enough, capturing several seconds per "frame."

Anyway, parts of the video prior to that 3 minute timestamp aren't immune from a bit of obvious light pollution. Even that kind of star visibility would be desirable and impossible anywhere I have lived.

My neighborhood is in a major city and seems better than most nearby ones. That still amounts to very bright *gray* night sky backgrounds that obscure almost all the stars. There's virtually no visibility except for some tree-dominated spots like the front of my own block, and sometimes I need to look out of my peripheral vision to see any stars. It's worse after snow accumulates and the bright gray sky becomes an odd shade of pink for some reason.

Living here for 10 years, I had noticed for the latter half that I can barely follow the stars that used to be somewhat more visible, like the constellation of Orion. Now in my mid-thirties I have wondered whether the problem is my night vision degrading "naturally" (as happens with hearing) or of the pollution problem was supposed to be noticeable over one's lifetime (2% a year doesn't seem to matter).

One of my dreams is being in an area that is dark enough to watch the Milky Way with friends again. I don't own a car nor have any business near towns 2 hours away that would offer that chance. Here is a dynamic light pollution map that I found with a quick search - https://www.lightpollutionmap....

I somewhat satiate the physical problems for filling that thirst for astro-philia by using software. Before I knew of open source, I started with a demo of Starry Night (just found the current pro version is $150).

Now I use free multi-OS options like Stellarium for Windows and Linux. It is a looking glass to the sky, sensitive to your local latitude where you can remove the atmosphere or accelerate time or zoom into stars and planets).

Celestia allows traveling in space and time with nice planet models of the solar system and beyond. It was handy for roughly tracking the eclipse "shadow" above North America in real time at work. It can also show let you track the ISS. I have a blast when fixing perspectives to watch Earth from the ISS (I recall an earlier version back when MIR had stopped floating around), or using it to better understand retrograde loops in planet motions (http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com)/movements.htm) and syncing up with the pole and letting earth spin a time lapse to watch the polar shadow to grok the seasons without thinking of flashlights shining on basketballs.

Have fun!

What is it

[sjames]

With supposedly grown-ass adults needing their night light?