The Loss of Dark Skies Is So Painful, Astronomers Coined a New Term For It: 'Noctalgia' (space.com) 122
Humanity is slowly losing access to the night sky, and astronomers have invented a new term to describe the pain associated with this loss: "noctalgia," meaning "sky grief." Space.com reports: Along with our propensity for polluting air and water and the massive amounts of carbon we're dumping into the atmosphere to trigger climate change, we have created another kind of pollution: light pollution. [...] Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is "noctalgia." In general, it means "sky grief," and it captures the collective pain we are experiencing as we continue to lose access to the night sky.
Thankfully, there is a way to tackle noctalgia, just as there are ways to combat climate change. On the ground, efforts have sprung up across the globe to create dark-sky reserves, where surrounding communities pledge not to encroach with further expansions of light pollution. [...] Tackling satellite-based pollution is another matter, as that will require international cooperation and pressure on companies like SpaceX to be better stewards of the skies they are filling with equipment.
Thankfully, there is a way to tackle noctalgia, just as there are ways to combat climate change. On the ground, efforts have sprung up across the globe to create dark-sky reserves, where surrounding communities pledge not to encroach with further expansions of light pollution. [...] Tackling satellite-based pollution is another matter, as that will require international cooperation and pressure on companies like SpaceX to be better stewards of the skies they are filling with equipment.
LED (Score:1)
As we change to LED lights which are so efficient the housing designed for most of them is terrible. They scatter light everywhere and many don't have a diffuser so it each LED is like a laser piercing your eyes.
One of the big issues I see now is that old street light posts are being removed for new ones closer together so there is even more light which just is not needed.
I have noticed the change in light pollution go from yellow to white and is much brighter now within the last 5 years.
Re:LED (Score:5, Informative)
> No. You've noticed a change in light pollution and completely misattributed it to a technology or colour balance.
Flag as Inappropriate
Incorrect. Plainly incorrect. The light pollution used to be quite orange due to the fact that sodium lights were used. Filters were avaliable for telescopes that specifically filtered out that wavelength. They dont work anymore, now with LED lighting that has several spikes to create its fake white (as interpreted by the brain) the light pollution is of a different colour and harder to filter out.
So yes it HAS gotten brighter and yes it HAS changed colour.
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What is "fake" white?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: LED (Score:2)
OJ Simpson in the 80's
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Filters were avaliable for telescopes that specifically filtered out that wavelength.
You are talking about a completely different thing. Being able to filter out light pollution doesn't mean light pollution doesn't exist. And yes I have those filters, and no they didn't work well before LEDs either because we never had a single source of light. Lighting has always been a large and varied mix of different technologies. Even sodium vapour lamps came in 3 different variants which spit out 3 different spectra, and they are not the main source of light pollution from a city centre, which was ins
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You seem to be talking gibberish, nothing you wrote made sence AC.
What has so called "progress" if you can call it that got to do with the fact the sky glow colour has changed?
Re:LED (Score:5, Informative)
The sad part is the total failure to take advantage of the stress free instant on capability. Years ago, Georgia Tech randomized their streetlights so they only turned on 33% of the time. They found an actual reduction in campus incidents since any given light might turn on at any given time and it was hard to tell what would or would not be illuminated. It also saved a lot of power and light pollution. Of course, cycling stressed the sodium vapor lights.
LEDs could do that without the stress. They could even be motion activated.
Other studies have found that no lighting is actually safer since that way there are no deep shadows to hide in. Low intensity path lights would be enough for people with poor night vision to stay on the sidewalk.
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I'm just waiting until someone links LED usage to autism, because they saw a diagram somewhere that correlates LED use with autism diagnosis.
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LED vs Vapor not incandescent (Score:3)
Actually, that would be if the street lights were incandescent bulbs. But incandescent were rare for street lighting. Too expensive, and the bulbs blew too often. So cheaper variations like sodium vapor are still common.
LED only has around an 18% advantage over sodium vapor. So shutting them off 33% of the time would indeed help. The downside is that sodium vapor's CRI socks. That is why astronomers actually liked it better, as there was only one frequency to filter out.
What would help more would be mo
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The downside is that sodium vapor's CRI socks.
Today I learned... Color Rendering Index [wikipedia.org]. Apparently low pressure sodium lighting has a negative CRI.
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If filtering it out is useful, perhaps LED bulbs could be tuned to make that easier to do? It should be possible to tweak them to match the spectrum of sodium vapor. I'm not talking about faking it with RGB LEDs, but adjusting the materials and such to mak
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People seem to already have forgotten that LEDs as descrete electronic devices naturally have a fairly narrow spectrum, that is their CRI also sucks.
The "white LEDs" that we're using today usually combine a number of monochromatic LEDs to make the resulting light appear "white" to the primate eye, or we use a monochromatic blue/UV LED to excite a phosor which then scatters the blue/UV over a wider range in the visible spectrum.
Now I'm not exactly sure w
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People seem to already have forgotten that LEDs as descrete electronic devices naturally have a fairly narrow spectrum, that is their CRI also sucks.
I think that the difference here might be that sodium vapor is 1 frequency(range) to worry about, while most white LEDs have at least 3 to worry about.
Plus, as a bonus, those 3 vary manufacturer to manufacturer.
Yes, legislation could probably be passed to limit white LEDs intended for outdoor use to 3 specific ones, but that would mean the legislation would have to care enough to both pass it and enforce it.
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Before the blue LED was invented in 1989, we didn't even have white LEDs.
I note this because the usual argument from anti-LEDers back in the day used to be that the spectrum from LEDs is too monochromatic and unnatural, while incandescent light is more closer to the spectrum that fire creates or how sunlight scatters through the atmosphere during sunset/sunrise, which which humans have evolved for millions of years
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This was before those phosphor white LEDs were widely introduced, which created a wider spectrum. And today we complain about the spectrum being too wide?
This is a matter of optimizing for different needs. Positives and negatives.
For example, Incandescents still have the highest CRI(Color Rendering Index), but their energy efficiency is bad - meaning you both spend more in electricity than the bulb costs, and the attending problems with heat - with them you need heat resistant lamps, if you want a lot of light in a small area(such as for actor makeup), you could actually run into problems of so much heat that you'd melt the makeup. They're also cheap and r
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But I get the feeling that we're still talking past each other, so I'm trying to rephrase again.
We could make LED based lights that combine the "best of both wordls" of sodium vapor in terms of light pollution because the spectrum you get out of LED lighting technology is highly tunable, and LED not needing warm up, and also being a bit more energy efficient.
All the technology is already here and available. Besides of having to overcome ideological issues, as mentioned b
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I looked it up and apparently you can make yellow yellow with a spectrum from 585nm to 595nm with Gallium Arsenide Phosphide doped with Nitrogen.
The spectrum of low pressure sodium, which according to the internet peaks around 589nm, could be decently enough approximated with the GaAsP:N LED.
No idea about the manufacturing costs though, because we'd need to produce these at large scales to light our cities and roads with them. But I do remember that at least during
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Volume of production can make things cheaper again much of the time, perhaps additional development.
But I also proposed limiting the spectrum earlier, though in line with improving perception/vision, because there are issues with sodium vapor, it was to a set 3 spectrums.
Going to a straight 1 spectrum led means that you can eliminate the phosphor coating completely, and that should result in a very efficient LED.
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I was thrown off by the "amber" orange ones, which are made from GaAsP without the Nitrogen doping, being the one's suggested by astronomers and environmentalist to reduce light pollution even further by operating in the range between 590nm to 625nm. Since I hadn't seen those before being widely used, I presumed that there must be some considerable downsid
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LED street lighting still consumes enormous amounts of power. Also, note the security advantages of the cycling lights as well as the significant reduction in light pollution.
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> no lighting is actually safer since that way there are no deep shadows to hide in
Someone will read your comment and decide that deep shadows just mean the need for more lighting. "If it ain't daylight-bright, it ain't safe."
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Other studies have found that no lighting is actually safer since that way there are no deep shadows to hide in. Low intensity path lights would be enough for people with poor night vision to stay on the sidewalk.
My parents drove to Romania in the Eighties and found that all cars there drove without lights at night. There were simply no lightbulbs available, so drivers never switched on their lights. And without streetlights the eyes would accommodate to the darkness just fine. My parents said you could see traffic from miles away and they felt it was actually safer to drive at night without artificial lighting.
Re:LED (Score:5, Insightful)
I have noticed the change in light pollution go from yellow to white and is much brighter now within the last 5 years.
No. You've noticed a change in light pollution and completely misattributed it to a technology or colour balance.
The parent is correct and I'm really not sure why you're arguing against the last decade or two of light advancement in damn near every related product. We haven't exactly regressed with the tech.
Pick up any handheld flashlight from the 1970s and it'll look like a candle compared to almost anything we make today. Light pollution has gotten worse because of both volume and the swapping out of older lights with newer ones, which are considerably brighter.
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The parent is correct and I'm really not sure why you're arguing against the last decade or two of light advancement in damn near every related product.
No, just saying so doesn't make something true. The parent postulated that LEDs somehow increase light pollution and that deflector designs are bad because LED. No. Increase in lighting increased light pollution. Bad deflector designs are bad because designers of deflectors are bad. The LED has zero to do with it.
Pick up any handheld flashlight from the 1970s and it'll look like a candle compared to almost anything we make today.
Handheld flashlights are not causing light pollution.
Light pollution has gotten worse because of both volume and the swapping out of older lights with newer ones, which are considerably brighter.
How can you spend so much time arguing against me while agreeing with my point? Did you even read my post? Wait, let me check, geekmux, no I don
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The parent is correct and I'm really not sure why you're arguing against the last decade or two of light advancement in damn near every related product.
No, just saying so doesn't make something true. The parent postulated that LEDs somehow increase light pollution and that deflector designs are bad because LED. No. Increase in lighting increased light pollution. Bad deflector designs are bad because designers of deflectors are bad. The LED has zero to do with it.
Tell me something...if it has nothing to do with LEDs, then why the hell do we use them? Replacing the carbon filament light bulb, or just about every variant that has come along to slightly improve on that design, offers little in comparison to the considerable power of replacing that with an array of LEDs that offer directional and direct lighting (as I explained when inadvertently staring at an ultra-bright LED on a computer chassis decades ago), and can also offer that lighting in several different spe
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A single ultrabright LED powers many pocket flashlights, proving LEDs can be quite directional in manner. Any PC nerd swapping out those stock LEDs for ultra-bright upgraded LEDs on their computer chassis back in the day knows the blinding power of them when you catch yourself staring right at a flashing CD-ROM light.
Because LEDs can be arranged in directional arrays, they can appear to "scatter" light a lot better than stock bulb designs a century old.
But since you seem to disagree, I recommend staring di
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Like the parent you keep using words that you don't seem to understand. So contradictory statements seem to make perfectly sense until someone points it out and you get angry. Cognitive dissonance be a bitch.
Tried to avoid people being anal here by using "loose" terminology. Clearly it wasn't enough for the anally-inclined. Run along and go stare at new street lights. I'm certain if you stare long enough you'll find your point. Or prove mine.
Night pain/grief/distress (Score:5, Informative)
Noct- means night, not sky. The Latin word behind it (nox) even comes from the same PIE root as the Germanic word which became night in English, so they're cognates. Sky grief would be celalgia or caelalgia if we accept a mixed Greco-Latin etymology, or ouranalgia for a purist Greek-only etymology.
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Glad I'm not the only one to be irked by that.
On the other hand, and back to the real subject matter, RE: Light Pollution--
There will still be areas where light pollution will be at a minimum; Areas where people dont want to be, for one reason or another. While this kills the backyard enthusiast with their amateur telescope, such light pollution problems have been things for a very very long time.
Simply "Just outside the suburbs" is not sufficient, because of the sky glow that dominates the horizon from la
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Depends on the national forest. Quite a few have natural prominences that would make great vantages for horizon observation. Might be a bit chilly, since there's nothing to stop night-time winds, so bring a jacket- but still doable.
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Some must. I remember hiking Mt. Washington in NH and just before the last steep ascent (like climbing a 1000 ft. rock ladder) to the summit there was Lake of the Clouds (or Lake in the Clouds?) - a tiny hotel of sorts for climbers.
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> No, you need more "Long road trip to an isolated cabin out in the middle of the national forest
Easy to do in the US. Almost impossible in the UK where we only have a few designated areas that still have a dark sky.
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It's sad that many kids know all of the stars in the sky, all five of them.
Many people have looked at the stars at night and found inspiration. Not going to happen for most kids today.
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And yes, a pity it is harder and harder to find a properly dark spot.
I remember sparkling starry nights in the Sahara, the Saudi desert and Australia but this is all years ago, such nights no longer exist in places like The Netherlands or even Denmark.
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Noct- means night, not sky.
Maybe I hang out with too many people who like astronomy but seeing how the night is dark and light pollution is objectively not I don't see the problem here. I typically don't have a problem with light pollution during the day.
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I see you are a true slashdotter who not only skips reading the article but also the summary. My objection is not to the word but to the gloss which is given in the quoted extract (or maybe the "summary" quotes the whole article - I haven't RTFA either) and repeated in the introductory sentence before the blockquote.
Re:Night pain/grief/distress (Score:5, Funny)
Wait ... Slashdot has summaries?
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To be fair, in the abstract they say they offer the term noctalgia to express "sky grief", they don't claim it's a literal translation, although the usage in the title of the paper is unhelpful. But clearly it's the night sky specifically that is referred to, and I suspect that a Latin term literally translating as "night sky grief" would be unwieldy, which would be contrary to purpose.
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All excellent points.
It's a stupid word, especially when the word nostalgia is perfectly fitted for the work that the neologism is supposed to do. Do we need a special version of nostalgia for everything that we miss?
Baseball without the pitchclock?
OSs without advertising?
The net without data mining?
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Noct- means night, not sky. The Latin word behind it (nox) even comes from the same PIE root as the Germanic word which became night in English, so they're cognates. Sky grief would be celalgia or caelalgia if we accept a mixed Greco-Latin etymology, or ouranalgia for a purist Greek-only etymology.
Admittedly before that post I didn't read it too closely and thought it was Noctstalgia, a portmanteau of Nocturnal and Nostalgia.
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And to avoid mixing Greek and Latin, it should be "nictalgia" or "nyctalgia".
Thank you. (Score:2)
Now do "unisex."
And then "multiverse."
I remember (Score:5, Insightful)
At one time I remeber just about being able to see the Milky Way back in the 90's outside my house with the sodium based streetlights pulluting the sky.
It was just very faint but you could see it was there.
Now you cant see it at all. Its gone. Obliterated by inefficient (as in they dont do a good job vs the sodium lights) LED street lights that seem to spew most of their emmisions upwards. Coupled with the fact that most properties these days since the 90's have invested in LED lights for the garden and security lights that have increased in popularity sine then too. Those LED lights in the garden look dim to us but every photon that is not absorbed or reflected down at the ground adds to the photons that are reflected far above ground into telescopes and cameras and binoculars and naked eyes, add adding the the constant glow that muddies the heavens.
To get away from it you must drive far out into the countryside, something taht is easy to do in the US but in the UK we have only a few areas classed as having true dark skies, far away enough from major settlements that can pollute.
Only a few years ago, 4 I think, I went and stayed in a cottage in the middle of nowhere in cornwall. It was so out in the sticks that water was pumped from the local well and the internet was good old copper wire giving just about a megabit of bandwidth.
It was fucking dark at night. I have never seen anything so dark before. Literally open my eyes at 2am and nothing, cant see my hand in front of my face. Youd think you had gone blind.
Then I looked out the window knowing full well what I hoped to see.
And I saw. Only once before as a kid was I somewhere on holiday with skies dark enough, back then I clearly remember seeing the Milky Way. But this was something else.
Literally the ONLY light was starlight. I saw it all.
The vast majority of people have no idea what they are missing. They don’t know what its like to see the silhouette of their own hand held in front of the stars.
Our ancestors did, and not that long ago either.
I think we should campaign to have one night a week where for a few hours all street lights are switched off. They have happened before, I think it should be law.
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yes LED lights pointed at the ground spew light up, though their circuit boards, aluminum heat sinks and reflector housing directly into the sky
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Nope
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Obliterated by inefficient (as in they dont do a good job vs the sodium lights) LED street lights that seem to spew most of their emmisions upwards.
That's about as incorrect as it can be. Modern LED streetlamps are far more efficient than sodium lamps at containing the light.
Do an experiment, look out of an airplane window when you are taking off at night. You will clearly see sodium lamps, as orange pinpricks. You will NOT see LED streetlamps, you can only see the cones of light on the ground.
Only just begun - 50,000+ new satellites in 5yrs (Score:2)
China is launching two swarms of 16000 each. US is launching a swarm of 16000. Presumably EU and Russia will be doing something similar. Not to forget India.
Re: Only just begun - 50,000+ new satellites in 5y (Score:2)
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Experiment done in 2020 with 60 Starlink salellites. Result: "The darkening paint on DarkSat certainly halves reflection of sunlight compared to the ordinary Starlink satellites, but [the constellation’s] negative impact on astronomical observations still remains" https://physicsworld.com/a/dar... [physicsworld.com] "Although DarkSat’s antireflective coating rendered it invisible to the naked eye, it remains far too bright to avoid interfering with [...] major telescopes." https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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1. Paint is heavy, in space terms
2. Paint is expensive for space rated stuff.
3. Insulation is expensive and inefficient. Remember, vacuum is a very good insulator anyways. Getting rid of heat is still a problem
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Before long the sky will be full of orbiting advertisment platforms with huge screens advertising Slurm.
Space will best be observed from space. (Score:2)
Terrestrial light pollution is inevitable but other than it being a barrier to entry to amateur astronomy, is there any important loss?
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Moths [wiley.com]. Ok, that's a simplistic overstatement of the claims: the nuanced version is
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There are also reports of disruption of nocturnally respiring plant lifecycles.
https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com]
It's still a problem that will not be solved. I'm gonna be a pessimist about that to the very end. Much like we've KNOWN about anthropogenic climate change, and CO2 temperature forcing for well over 100yrs, and done everything *BUT* actually take reparative steps to correct that problem-- because economic activity and human standard of living increases trump EVERYTHING ELSE-- the same will be tru
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Inspiration. Many future artists, poets, and scientists were first inspired by looking at the stars at night.
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While a complete elimination of light pollution is probably not feasible, we should definitely work on illuminating only the places that are necessary, keeping "leakage" as low as possible.
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> Terrestrial light pollution is inevitable
No it isnt.
All you need to do is point the light at the ground rather than the sky! The fact is they are pointing much of it into the sky.
> is there any important loss?
How about the night sky? And no, thats not needed as an entry into astronomy. Thats like saying the loss of a park affects nobody but kids who might be inspired to become tree surgeons. Some people like to go to the park for other reasons than to learn an oak vs a pine. Or the loss of a po
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Without terrestrial light pollution a person is struck by wonder simply by looking up at the night sky and experiencing it in its natural form. If that doesn't qualify as "important" to you then I'm not sure what could.
Hmmmm.... (Score:3)
Tackling satellite-based pollution is another matter, as that will require international cooperation and pressure on companies like SpaceX to be better stewards of the skies they are filling with equipment.
You mean: 'Voluntary self-regulation by industry' ?? Well, if that actually works out this time instead of becoming another textbook example of the 'tragedy of the comons' [wikipedia.org] it'll be a historic first.
Horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
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> The fact that electricity is cheap does not mean we have to light up everything
Oh I wish it were cheap. In the UK it's amazingly expensive yet they still try to light up the clouds.
I wonder what they are looking for? Santa?
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I wonder what they are looking for? Santa?
Perhaps they're still looking for Germans flying overhead [9gag.com].
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> Out on a camping trip in the mountains some 30 km from the nearest town with 100 thousand residents
I wouldn't consider 15 minutes away from a Walmart really trying to get "out there" you know.
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> Out on a camping trip in the mountains some 30 km from the nearest town with 100 thousand residents
I wouldn't consider 15 minutes away from a Walmart really trying to get "out there" you know.
The thing is, 30 miles from a town outskirt should be enough that light pollution isn't an issue. For me, just getting a few miles out of town will be enough, let alone going all the way out to the sticks. I live in the UK though, 30 miles here means that I've passed two major towns, 5 minor ones and the regional accent has changed.
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> The thing is, 30 miles
He said Kilometers.
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> The thing is, 30 miles
He said Kilometers.
I also said a few miles, which will be less than 20 KM (12.5 odd miles). Also, it's kilometres. Meter is something you measure with (E.G. speedometer), a metre is a unit of measurement (E.G. erm... kilometre) and it's not a proper noun, so it shouldn't be capitalised in the middle of a sentence. If you're going to be capt. Pedantic, at least get the basics right.
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Scientific issues aside, light polution is ruining outdoor experiences for me. Out on a camping trip in the mountains some 30 km from the nearest town with 100 thousand residents and there was an eerie glow reflected all over the desolate landscape from the clouds. Now I live in Norway where people put LEDs freaking everywhere that are on continuously during the winter. I live in a small town with 2k people and the stars are still not really visible. The fact that electricity is cheap does not mean we have to light up everything.
If you've enough cloud cover to reflect ground lighting, you're not going to see stars no matter what. I live in a UK town of 175,000 and you can still see the night sky even with street lights.
1. Street lights are pointed downwards.
2. They aren't set to be that powerful. Just enough that you can see where you're going.
Outside of the town centre you don't have much light pollution, down at the town's university it can be pitch black (as some unfortunate student found out, by stumbling into the lake
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It's in our nature to not care where lights are pointed and wind up making things shitty for everyone else. But that's a shitty nature, and we should overcome it, because writ large it's exactly the problem with every fucking thing. It's someone else's problem! Well, guess what, what goes around comes around. You do it to other people, other people do it to you, we all suffer and nobody seems to know why when it's obvious.
Motion Sensors (Score:3)
I moved to a dark area and all my outdoor lights are on motion sensors, most on PV/battery (these: https://amzn.to/3RvgS31 [amzn.to] ) so the property is black unless somebody needs it.
It's cheap and easy - mostly commercial buildings have continuous lighting and mostly that is to deter criminal loitering.
Perhaps we have a poverty problem presenting as light pollution.
Hey ... (Score:1)
SpaceX (Score:3)
It's too bad, LED Scatter even in rural areas (Score:2)
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The Time-Domain Multiplexing Solution (Score:1)
Discrimination (Score:2)
Old people and alcoholics will protest, having lost significant parts of their night vision and now becoming dependent on higher levels of street lighting.
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Wasting energy (Score:2)
Skyglow (Score:2)
Easy Win Solutions (Score:2)
There are plenty of measured detrimental effects of light pollution...
1. Messes with peoples' vision.
2. Messes with wildlife (animals and insects)
3. Messes with scientific observation
4. Messes with sleep cycles (less so with lower temperature colors)
5. Reduces or eliminates enjoyment of the natural night sky
and the primary sources are pretty easy to describe:
1. Lights aiming directly up into the sky
2. Lights aiming directly at the ground, but reflected up
3. Ambient lights with no aiming or shaping
The effect
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It's essentially "Man Yells at Cloud"-- Crabby Hobby Scientist Edition.
Older people remember when there were significantly fewer people, and when technological profusion was significantly less, with a commensurately large reduction in nighttime light pollution.
They remember being inspired by looking up at the night-time sky, and seeing the stars, and being curious about them.
They are upset and butthurt that looking up now, one sees very little but a diffuse dull grey, or sometimes brown.
Short of murderating
Re:re (Score:4, Informative)
Not true. Some towns are replacing their streetlights with designs which leak less light upwards in order to reduce light pollution.
It's also worth noting that it's not just astronomers who are upset. Entomologists are worried about the effect on moths and other nocturnal insects.
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While this is true, such mitigations are just that-- mitigations. The actual source of the light pollution is still the advancement of human standard of living, and increases in economic activity.
Even with devices that 100% aim straight down, the refractive/reflective nature of the road surfaces will beam light back up into the sky. The only way to have black sky, is to have no lights at all.
No amount of nostalgia is going to bring that back. As the population grows, and economic pressures for people to w
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As the population grows,
Fortunately, that seems [bbc.com] to be reversing [livescience.com].
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You're proposing a false dichotomy.
There are a lot more options, or at least a range between 'no stars' and 'all stars'.
We don't need to eliminate 100% of the light to improve the situation. All it'd take would be awareness and engineering. It would even ultimately save money!
First, stop just throwing more light at perceived problems. Better light fixtures that put light where it is needed and not elsewhere. Also, do things need to be lit that brightly?
Next, time light better. Motion sensors could shut
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I am not sure motion sensors are actually better for wild life, and in some cases even astronomy equipment. Sudden bursts of light can be quite disruptive.
We should consider light pollution, to be what is it is pollution.
The other thing to consider is humans are animals too and we are also evolved to have darkness at night. There could be significant public health / mental advantages to restrictions the use outdoor artificial light, between certain hours dark to dawn.
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Or, just a thought here, the so-called grown ups could finally overcome their need for a night light, only decades after the end of toddlerhood.
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> or going full luddite on everything that emits light at night
Or how about people just stop trying to light up the clouds at night?
Point the lights at the ground you fools. Why are you trying to light up the clouds?
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Since many years astronomers build their observatories at some of the darkest places and with the clearest skies on earth and even in those places they are now seeing the light pollution.
So please, think before de-funding.
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> So please, think before de-funding.
Unfortunatley they dont, they cant see anything when looking up thus winge and whine about it as if it's nothing that they care about.
They just want their little wasteful garden lights. When they look up all they see is the moon and maybe a planet which they think is one of the few stars in the sky.
They wont know the wonder of seeing M42 or Andromeda or the Milky Way arching across the sky. I bet the couldnt even see that comet.
We try and give dark skies to them and
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Every man woman and child has the ancient right of being able to see the glory of the night sky.
THATS what this is all about, its not like it is a new argument or anything it's beein going on since I was born in 1980. Just now it has gotten so bad that there is no point for most people looking up anymore as there is nothing to see besides the moon and planets, well most of them.
All because of light pollution that is nothing more that poorly designed wasteful lights that shine light uselessly upwards wastin
Re: (Score:2)
How about live and raise your kids in something other than an "Urban Jungle" like NYC and the like?
I grew up where my neighborhood was on the border of undeveloped woods. Mind you, this was NOT a rural area, but at the edge of the city as it expanded.
We ran around in the woods, built forts, etc.....plenty of nature to b
Re: Sick and tired of special interest groups (Score:2)
So I'm free to park my car in front of your house and blast bass all night, right. Thank you, you're one in a million.