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The Illuminati Project Pushes For Dark Skies In 2009
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jan 07, 2009 06:31 PM
from the daddy-what-were-light-bulbs? dept.
from the daddy-what-were-light-bulbs? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter published in Sidereus Nuncius ('Starry Messenger'). To improve scientific literacy, the NOAO and NASA are promoting dark-sky initiatives in 2009 to draw attention to the problem of light pollution which obscures nearly all night sky colors and objects except for the moon and a few bright stars and planets. Project Illuminati is a Flickr project by James Cann to showcase the beauty of light pollution to raise awareness and educate fellow Earthmates to lower energy consumption and become more curious about our place in the universe."
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Submission: The Illuminati Project - Dark Skies in 2009 by Anonymous Coward
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The Illuminati Project Pushes For Dark Skies In 2009
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I am confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are trying to promote dark skies (which of course show some amazing celestial bodies) by showing how pretty of a red sky light pollution makes???
Re:I am confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of things people can do to stop light pollution without increasing risks.
The easiest example I remember is streetlights that use cones to direct the light at the ground instead of letting it escape every direction including up into the sky. The amount of light we have on the ground remains the same and light pollution is noticeably reduced by this simple example.
Thanks for making me waste a mod point by replying to your knee-jerk response.
- I'm also confused by their campaign choice, let's stop light pollution cause it's so.. beautiful!
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Re:Simple Example (Score:5, Interesting)
In order for the light to remain the same, you'd probably have to reduce the power to the lamp.
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Re:Simple Example (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Simple Example (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, wasting a good thread for modding by replying to this but since no one else has I'll bite.
Why legislate? If the lamps were cost effective, then the municipalities would make the switch. Right now in central Ohio the primary electric provider charges in the neighborhood of $5 per lamp per month for power. The muni is responsible for purchasing the bulbs if I am remembering correctly.
First, you legislate it since its the only way to get it done. Sad but true. Next, you only need LED light bulbs [wikipedia.org]. You don't have to replace the full lamp, at least if these [ccrane.com] consumer [earthled.com] sites [productdose.com] are anything to go by.
If the cost of power and the cost of the bulb are figured in, the LED street lamps take an insane amount of time to recoup the cost. Even when you figure in the labor to replace the bulbs every couple of years it still doesn't add up.
Per the source [nytimes.com] Wikipedia provided the extra initial cost is paid off within two years just from the electricity savings, and barring a physical disaster (such as the streetlamp falling over or getting shot with a gun) you don't have to change the bulb for 20 years. Really, it is a better choice but it would require work by city employees to actually make the change happen. They may even have to do a slide show!
When many budgets are being stretched to the breaking point would you advocate for your town to install LED street lights that will cost more? Would you vote for your taxes to be increased to purchase the lights, or would you prefer that a couple of employees be terminated to pay for the cost difference? I, myself, am not opposed to the idea of installing power saving, pollution reducing equipment, but there has to be a balance somewhere.
Hell yes I would advocate for this. Budgets don't magically get bigger on their own. You have to work for it. You have to plan and invest for it. This is a very, fucking, simple, means to save the city/town a lot of money and power, and it cuts down on light pollution as an added bonus!
Oh and something else to chew on: as more demand for LED lights increases, in the form of cities and towns using them for streetlights, the manufacturing process will be improved as companies compete with one another to produce a cheaper light bulb to sell. That's basic market principles. Demand drives innovation. Yet another long term economic bonus by mandating a switch to LED lights.
Apparently the Department of Energy in the US thinks they're a damn good thing that should be improved so they can become the defacto light source. They're hosting a contest [lightingprize.org] since May 2008 to create a better LED light bulb. They call it the L-Prize.
Really, once you look at the known facts and the future potential you have to ask yourself why not? A handful of employees might lose their job? Taxes may go up a fraction of a percent? You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't make improvements for the future without paying for it. To hold back on something as simple as this for the reasons you gave is petty, just petty.
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Re:I am confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that was a knee jerk response, but a good one. Often You hear advocacy group A advocate their position as if it was the only one around. For the price of a starbucks latte we could put a Man on mars!. Or eliminate Cancer. Or eliminate AIDS. Or Create 1 million high paying jobs.
The point being that there are trade offs... opportunity costs. That isn't an argument for the status quo, but somethings need to be considered in conjunction with other factors. As the parent suggested perhaps there is a way we could cheaply reduce the light pollution while maintaining the current level of crime fighting that it gives us.
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Re:I am confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I am confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps simply because blue is a calming color?
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Re:I am confused... (Score:4, Interesting)
If they travelled about 30 miles they would have been able to see a thousand or so and just made out the milky way. If they travelled 100 miles they would have seen real dark skies - but they had obviously done neither.
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Re:I am confused... (Score:4, Interesting)
drive for a couple hours
You're lucky if you live somewhere where darkness is only a car drive away.
The islands that constitute my home country are pretty thoroughly populated, so there's no direction in which a couple hours' drive would get you to a dark spot; I'd have to drive a good distance into the neighbouring country. Not something I'd do for casual stargazing to awe and inspire the kids!
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Re:Apocalypse (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps the rest of you could finally kill each other off so I can enjoy the night sky. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
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Re:I am confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing provides a more dramatic reduction in crime than a good streetlight
Nothing provides help for criminals like a poorly designed streetlight that provides strong cover shadows while blinding would-be crime watchers. Most super bright nighttime lighting does exactly this. People like you who think any light is a good light are part of the problem, both for crime and seeing the stars.
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Re:I am confused... (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed,
money can buy allot of shotgun shells.
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It's really amazing how much of a difference (Score:5, Informative)
getting out into the middle of nowhere makes. On a clear night out in Yellowstone, for example, there are so many stars in the sky it can be hard to find constellations you're used to seeing in the city. Really beautiful.
People need to get past the idea that you have to try to illuminate every shadow. All you're doing is ruining people's night vision, and thus making the remaining shadows "darker".
Red lights (Score:5, Interesting)
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+1 Clever! :) (Score:4, Funny)
Whenever I explain your point to other people, they look at me like I'm from another planet.
You'll get used to it, eventually... sometimes the easiest way is to just tell them that you ARE ;)
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Re:Red lights (Score:5, Informative)
correct. The pupil is effected (affected? - who gives a fsck) by the blue scale. The use of a red light for night time map reading etc allows the pupil to remain open and there is no visibility lost when the light is switched off.
Try for yourself. Get a torch and a red filter and a blue filter. Go out at night and let your eyes get used to the darkness. Shine the torch through the red filter such that you cannot see any white lite. You will be able to see quite well after you switch the torch off. Now try with the blue filter. Once you switch the torch off you will have to wait until your eyes adjust to the darkness again.
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Re:Red lights (Score:5, Funny)
Try for yourself. Get a torch and a red filter and a blue filter. Go out at night and let your eyes get used to the darkness. Shine the torch through the red filter such that you cannot see any white lite. You will be able to see quite well after you switch the torch off.
I tried, this - but not realizing you weren't American, I ended up setting both the red and blue filters on fire, and then badly burning myself trying to switch the torch off.
But is it my fault? I think not - you are the one named fireman sam, so I would have thought you'd have been a bit more responsible!
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Re:Red lights (Score:4, Interesting)
Red lights are used by people with telescopes. This page [stlplaces.com] has a good bit of detail on the biology behind night vision and different colors. The basic summary? If you want fast dark adaptation, use blue-green. If you want to see detail and can afford to lose peripheral vision, use very low level deep red. For general walking-around light. blue-green with enough red to get rid of the night blind spot (or dim white). If you need to see color, dim white.
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Cost of energy (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Cost of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Towns will question why they are spending so much on lighting and cut back...Similarly, I think people will curb their habits of trying to light entire cities at night.
And this curbing of their habits will come to an abrupt halt once someone is mugged/assaulted/raped on a normally safe - but slightly darker - street, and the think-of-the-children rallying cry is raised.
The bottom line is that lighting in heavily populated areas does increase safety, by discouraging those who would use the cover of darkness for their crimes. The couple dollars a night it takes to light a mile of street is well worth the cost to those living on, or walking at night on, those streets.
"It's better to light a candle, than curse the darkness."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
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Re:Cost of energy (Score:4, Insightful)
Towns will question why they are spending so much on lighting and cut back...Similarly, I think people will curb their habits of trying to light entire cities at night.
And this curbing of their habits will come to an abrupt halt once someone is mugged/assaulted/raped on a normally safe - but slightly darker - street, and the think-of-the-children rallying cry is raised. The bottom line is that lighting in heavily populated areas does increase safety, by discouraging those who would use the cover of darkness for their crimes. The couple dollars a night it takes to light a mile of street is well worth the cost to those living on, or walking at night on, those streets.
I am not sure I agree, Public lighting increases the contrast between light and shadow. And shadowed areas are still there.
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Re:Cost of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment uses something that he never said (slightly darker), to base your whole argumentation off of it.
The point of this whole thread was, that you can reduce light pollution without reducing brightness on the street at all.
in fact, mirroring the light back to the ground instead of losing it to the sky, will make for more efficient lights. So just installing mirrors will brighten the streets!
Installing lamps that are darker by the same amount, that they gain by reflecting everything to the streets, will make them exactly as bright as the old lights, while saving energy.
That's why some grand-parent post called it a win-win.
But you could not afford not to ignore that, could you? Or else your whole argumentation, and with that, your whole point of view, would collapse like a house of cards. And that you just could not accept.
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I will inject into this thread (Score:5, Insightful)
My annoyance with any and all of you who are reading this and use any kind of bright hurricane light while camping. You ruin my night vision. You dont need your stupid light you fool. Grrrr.
Even on the darkest of nights, you dont need any light to find your way around in the dark. Give yourself a couple minutes to adjust and you will do fine. If you really need light, get a maglite and some blue gels for it. Using a blue gel will let you turn on the light for a second or two while you check for the boogie man, and when you turn it off you'll have most of your night vision back right away.
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Re:I will inject into this thread (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to live in the country side when I was I kid and there were no lights. It used to be pitch black to the point where it felt like walking with my eyes closed.
Perhaps in open areas what you say is true however if you're in a wooded area with overhanging trees then you'd have no chance of seeing in the dark.
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beauty of light pollution (Score:2)
using pretty art to highlight "pollution" seems incongruous. shouldn't it be more intriguing [amazon.com] and a little repulsive [edwardburtynsky.com]?
Protecting the sky is possible (Score:5, Interesting)
Dark Sky Parks (Score:5, Interesting)
In Galloway in Scotland, the local tourist board is trying to set up a dark sky park. The area that they're planning to open it is apparently the darkest place in Europe.
There are already two in the US, in Utah (http://www.nps.gov/nabr/parknews/news040507.htm) and Northern Pennsylvania (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/cherrysprings.aspx). This BLDGBLOG article mentions suggests World Heritage sites for experiencing darkness, set up to protect dark areas: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/dark-sky-park.html [blogspot.com]
I recently visited Poland (Krakow) and there the level of street lighting was a lot lower, resulting in reduced light pollution. Streets were mostly lit with light reflected from buildings. It's surprising to be able to see the night sky from the middle of a city of 1 million. It's not comparable to countryside darkness by any means, but it really changes the character of a city.
Please turn off the lights! (Score:1, Funny)
They'll attract Vulcans and other alien riff-raff!
Absolutely, lets end civilization (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely, lets end civilization (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal of environmentalism is to improve the quality of life for human beings -- to ensure that our environment, which by definition is everything that surrounds us, is a healthy and pleasant place to live. I'm not sure what it is about this that raises your ire.
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African Environment (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Absolutely, lets end civilization (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, you've uncovered our evil plan! And we would have got away with it, too, if it weren't for you darn /.ers!
GMAFB. Environmentalists don't want people to starve to death any more than anti-environmentalists want people to choke to death on pollution. Pretty much everyone (well, everyone sane, anyway) wants steady food production, clean air and water, a healthy economy, thriving wildlife, etc.; we simply disagree about the best ways to accomplish these goals and resolve the conflicts which sometimes occur between them. If you want to talk about specific issues and ways you think we can do better than the current approach, go ahead. If all you can do is throw out blanket accusations, you have nothing of value to contribute to the discussion.
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Re:Absolutely, lets end civilization (Score:4, Insightful)
That's great, get back to me when Greenpeace and the World Wildlife foundation stop lying and want to join in real scientific debate rather then scaremongering.
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Re:Absolutely, lets end civilization (Score:5, Funny)
Think how much easier it would be to see the stars if we just stopped making electricity. The night skies would be black like they were a thousand years ago. We could all go back to living in caves and wearing fur, no wait, we can't kill animals, and wearing fur is evil and sit by the fire, no burning wood produces CO2, so we'll sit in our dark caves, huddled together to stay warm and slowly starve to death. But then there wouldn't be anyone to look up at the stars. And that is the true goal of "environmentalism".
Are you on a mission to pack the maximum amount of gibberish and straw men into a single post?
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Not just about turning off the lights (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not just about turning off the lights (Score:5, Interesting)
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Go where it's dark (Score:4, Interesting)
There are plenty of areas around which are void of lighting. Often times lights are necessary for safety and although you may be able to encourage people to use mirrors and what not to maximize the amount of light hitting the ground rather than going up into the sky, you're not going to have much luck getting populated areas to turn down the lights much. Lighting helps avoid crime.
You can't have a dark city.
The government should just make sure they have large enough plots of land that keep the cities far away so people can go visit and view the dark sky.
Re:Go where it's dark (Score:4, Interesting)
yes, but you can be smarter about it.
My street could loose 1/3 the street lights and it wouldn't impact crime.
Lights with caps, lower light that shine across a street instead of down, and so on.
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Re:Go where it's dark (Score:4, Insightful)
Light is way more effective (and cheaper) than surveillance cameras. The real issue about the light
pollution is that most street lights are old and are positioned wrong. They should target the floor, and the light should not spread in every direction (which is useless anyway). Better street lights would both reduce costs and light pollution.
However, it is extremely costly to replace all the street lights in a city.
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Tucson, AZ tries... (Score:5, Informative)
Tucson has been working on this for years to protect various local observatories. It's also the home to the international dark sky association: http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do [darksky.org]
They have a city ordinance making it illegal to have a light shining upwards - all lights (street lights, security lights, porch lights, etc) have to have a reflector. It's apparently pretty easy to police - bare bulbs are highly visible from the police helicopter.
Seems to be kinda silly to spend your lighting budget trying to illuminate the universe anyway.
sprawl (Score:5, Interesting)
My neighbors are typical americans - they came out into what was the countryside (our house was in the middle of nowhere for decades, now it looks like suburbs.)
After they built their McMansions, closer together than some of the houses in the city, using up the woods and fields I used to romp in, they installed huge arrays of sodium-vapor lighting on their houses, which they leave on 24 hours a day. For "security," or to make it homey, or whatever.
I used to go in the back yard to stargaze, I could even see the aurora borealis sometimes - in NY! We never even bothered to replace the outside floodlight over the driveway for years after it died, but the latest thing for all these new people seems to be to have a gazillion lights. Houses, cars, SUVs, three-wheelers, all festooned with lights - long driveways lined with bright lights left on at all times.
I don't get it. Why do people move out to the country if they don't want it to be like the country?
Flagstaff (Score:5, Informative)
There is plenty of lighting for the town and yet you can see stars like you should be able to see stars.
A mugger speaks... (Score:5, Funny)
... as a knife wielding teenage gang member I welcome any dark sky initiative - and I can assure you that all my victims will be seeing stars when I've finished with them (shortly before they die in a pool of their own blood ...)
At last, the needs of amateur astrologers, penny pinching local councils, and muggers finally coincide! Happy days!
Re:A mugger speaks... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't see any fnords (Score:3, Funny)
Or is this a different Illuminati Project ?
Everyone throw a rock at a streetlight! (Score:1, Insightful)
The name game (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it something in his genes that compels a Geek to give a worthwhile project a name that carries a lot of excess baggage?
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (Score:1)
http://www.astronomy2009.org/ [astronomy2009.org]
2009 is also the International Year of Astronomy.
From their website... "The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery."
Earthmate? (Score:2)
Terrible Photos (Score:3, Interesting)
Only the first [flickr.com] photo of the Group [flickr.com] is any good at "showing" light pollution. The rest are terrible.
Thats a great idea... (Score:5, Funny)
They should use comparison photos (Score:3, Insightful)
like this one taken on the night of the 2003 blackout, and on the following night
http://www.skynewsmagazine.com/pow/pow94.jpg [skynewsmagazine.com]
How Convenient... (Score:2)
I fondly remember seeing flashes of the aurora from my childhood home. If I was to go there now and look to the north, all I'd see was streetlights and haze - and it's still a small town. I feel for those who've never had the chance to view a truly dark sky, it's a wondrous sight. If you ever have the chance, when you've got a cool clear night ahead of you, drive out as far away from it all as you can (In Oregon, I recommend heading out to the high desert, out on BLM land - people in other locales will have to find something suitable for themselves) - near a new moon if you can manage it. Watch the sun go down, and the sky fill with stars and planets, satellites both man-made and natural, and take in the amazing scape and wonder of it all. If you've got a telescope, great, take it along - but if not, you'll still have quite a show. It's good for the soul - and with natural light becoming ever more pervasive, there's no time like the present.
Overtime? (Score:1)
ILLUMINATI?!?! (Score:1)
Moon and a few stars (Score:2)
Consumonster (Score:1)
IDA - International Dark-Sky Association (Score:2)
Last year, the New Yorker printed a great article [newyorker.com] on the subject of (lack of) dark skies to watch stars in.
Anyone interested in proper darkness, or even just improved outdoor lighting, should check out the IDA - International Dark-Sky Association [wikipedia.org].
The image [skynewsmagazine.com] in WormholeFiend's above post [slashdot.org] is an awesome example -- but we needn't a power outage to achieve this; it's really not very difficult to plan much better lighting solutions (curiously, the problem is often too much spotty light, and the solution is often simply to use less light, but in the right places).
Illuminati Project? (Score:1)
Want to See Some Dark Skies? (Score:1)
Go about fifty miles north of Gerlach [google.com], Nevada on a night with no moon and no clouds. Stay outside for at least two hours after midnight.
Then you'll understand what you're missing.
Gorgeous noctiluminesence (Score:1)
Lighting should be on the ground, not the sky! (Score:1)
Re:creators: nothing but blue skies from now on (Score:3, Interesting)
Archimedes Plutonium has found a new stomping ground I think. Update on his shares portfolio at 11.
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Re:Jesus, I hate the term "light pollution" (Score:2, Insightful)
Light pollution is when light intended for one purpose is directed in a manner such that it is wasted. For example, why should light from a streetlamp also emanate upwards? The light that doesn't serve the mission of having the source in the first place is considered pollution.
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Re:As Abraham Lincoln once said: (Score:2)
RAPE RAPE RAPE
Krauser-san raped time itself and became Abraham Lincoln??!?
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Re:Jesus, I hate the term "light pollution" (Score:2)
I don't know why the Slashdot censor crowd is modding these points down. I'm somehow being marked as "flamebait" even though I'm 20% flamebait and 40% insightful.
And not a single flame in reply. Every one of these replies has been intelligent, and has brought up fine examples of why we might consider light to be "pollution."
Go figure.
In any event, responding to you, you echo my point. I think you can't "pollute" darkness. You can, however, see darkness as a natural state, and that we are evolved to function within that natural state, and therefore the natural state is the ideal.
But what we are then saying is that the natural state is the ideal. Therefore, it's enough to call it "artificial light." It says the same thing as "light pollution."
And at that point, we start having a rational discussion about the drawbacks of "artificial light," if there are any. There is no debate as to the drawbacks of "natural darkness." And what we have is a choice between drawbacks, with it all on the table, instead of viewing "artificial" as bad and "natural" as good.
"Light pollution" is a term born of a false dichotomy. That somehow nature is good and artifice is evil, when in fact, both have drawbacks and benefits in a spectrum.
I think the overriding drawback of city lights is the carbon footprint, for instance, the actual tritium leak that occurred at the nuclear power plant near me. You know, actual pollution, and would kindly like the "think of the squirrels" and the "consult your pineal gland" people to stop distracting from the real issue of industrial pollution with their desire to star gaze, or become latter day cave men.
Oh dear, that last sentence may actually qualify as flame bait. Never mind. I have karma to burn.
--
Toro
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