From the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER and the “I blame Edison” department.
CREDIT
Falchi et al, Science Advances; Jakob Grothe/National Park Service, Matthew Price/CIRES/CU-Boulder.
The Milky Way, the brilliant river of stars that has dominated the night sky and human imaginations since time immemorial, is but a faded memory to one third of humanity and 80 percent of Americans, according to a new global atlas of light pollution produced by Italian and American scientists.
Light pollution is one of the most pervasive forms of environmental alteration. In most developed countries, the ubiquitous presence of artificial lights creates a luminous fog that swamps the stars and constellations of the night sky.
“We’ve got whole generations of people in the United States who have never seen the Milky Way,” said Chris Elvidge, a scientist with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Boulder, Colorado. “It’s a big part of our connection to the cosmos — and it’s been lost.”
Elvidge, along with Kimberly Baugh of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is part of a team that just updated a global atlas of light pollution published today in the journal Science Advances. Using high-resolution satellite data and precision sky brightness measurements, their study produced the most accurate assessment yet of the global impact of light pollution.
“I hope that this atlas will finally open the eyes of people to light pollution,” said lead author Fabio Falchi from the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy.
The atlas takes advantage of low-light imaging now available from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, calibrated by thousands of ground observations.
Light pollution is most extensive in countries like Singapore, Italy and South Korea, while Canada and Australia retain the most dark sky. In western Europe, only small areas of night sky remain relatively undiminished, mainly in Scotland, Sweden and Norway. Despite the vast open spaces of the American west, almost half of the U.S. experiences light-polluted nights.
“In the U.S., some of our national parks are just about the last refuge of darkness – places like Yellowstone and the desert southwest,” said co-author Dan Duriscoe of the National Park Service. “We’re lucky to have a lot of public land that provides a buffer from large cities.”
Light pollution does more than rob humans of the opportunity to ponder the night sky. Unnatural light can confuse or expose wildlife like insects, birds and sea turtles, with often fatal consequences.
Fortunately, light pollution can be controlled by shielding lights to limit shine to the immediate area, reducing lighting to the minimum amount needed — or by simply turning them off.
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In other news, North Korea still offers the Milky Way as the only free entertainment available at night, except in Pyongyang.
I’ve never seen the Milky Way. I’ve seen pictures of the Milky Way but I can’t say whether or not they are artificially enhanced photos or what it would look like with my own eyes.
Photos don’t do it justice, jared.
When it is across the whole dome of the sky it is almost surreal.
It wasn’t until I went camping in an isolated piece of NY state that I saw the Milky Way. Being a Jersey boy, born and bred, even from the ’60s the night sky was too light-polluted to see it at all, let alone properly. I kept wondering what everyone was nattering about in the books and articles I read that mentioned the Milky Way in some fashion. Now I know.
I saw it when driving across Arizona in 1979. Splashed across the sky, incredible.
(And, yes, every time a car passed, the headlights diminished the effect.)
No astroimage you have ever seen looks as though it would with your naked eye. Astronomical objects are too faint to be seen well even in a large telescope and require exposures with sensitive CCD cameras of minutes to many hours or even days. Some objects emit light at wavelengths that the eye is not very sensitive to. These long exposures are then processed to enhance contrast and brightness to produce the images you have seen.
The Milky Way is an exception. On a Moonless night it is incredibly bright. I have seen it at mid-latitudes and at tropical latitudes. In the tropics, our nearest stellar neighbors also shine incredibly bright.
Andromeda from my driveway.
Jared, standing outside on a clear, moonless night well away from any city or town and looking up is an incomparable experience. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself the favor of making the effort to do it. Take a red-lensed flash light and a star chart along and find the constellations. Regardless of where you live, in North America you should be able to reach a location dark enough within an hour at most provided you don’t simply hop on a freeway.
Use H.A. Rey’s “The Stars”. Best charts ever. There’s nothing like the constellations actually looking like what they are called. (Being a cartoonist, he just redrew the lines.)
http://codex99.com/illustration/the-stars.html
That’s a good link. I bookmarked it. Thanks.
Evan,
I was first introduced to the stars via H.A. Rey’s “Find the Constellations”. I lost the book ages ago but it seems it’s still in print – or at least it was when my children were that age. Two kids both interested in astronomy as a result of that book, as well as me.
Thanks for the reference!
I have the happiness of living in a fairly dark area where in between two towns 40 miles apart and behind a ridge. The Milky way is an ever astounding view on any clear night although the light pollution in the past 25 years is starting to be noticeable even from those two towns. There is a movement in place to start “dimming ” high way lights and changing them to “low” light stands but it is a very slow process.
Next we will hear how skyrocketing electricity prices are not only good for climate change but helps you see the Milky Way.
True in the UK. Many councils are turning off street lights at midnight to save money, allowing the Milky Way to be seen again for the first time since the 70’s!
There is an organization devoted to bring back dark skies: http://darksky.org/
Nothing better than to take my 13″ reflector to a mountain pass above 10K feet. There, there is nowhere in the sky without stars. To the naked eye there, the Milky Way is a river of light.
One half of humanity can’t see the Milky Way half of the time (day light). Just sayin’.
Meanwhile, is this problem really “light pollution” or “dark pollution”?
Seriously, on a clear night when you can see the Milky Way, it is breathtaking especially if you haven’t seen it in a long time.
In cities, when most of the urban socialist greens dwell, they look up and see only artifact that extends from their own lives.
It is pretty hard to develop a proper vista of the Cosmos and our relationship to it when you can’t even see stars.
Urban perspective is narrowing isn’t it.
“It is pretty hard to develop a proper vista of the Cosmos and our relationship to it when you can’t even see stars.”
Perhaps not a bad thing.
Pretty much the only time I ever really saw the Milky Way was when I lived 90 minutes outside Redding CA. Very striking, but it was not enough to compensate for living in the far boonies.
That’s right. Life is made up of choices. Most people living in cities don’t give a rat’s behind about seeing the Milky Way, and don’t consider themselves deprived at all if they never see it. Don’t believe me? Then ask a millenial and see if he/she will look up from their smart phone long enough to acknowledge your presence.
I have friends who live in the Sierra’s away from most light pollution. When I visit in the summer, I always spend the evening outside amazed at what the bright Milky Way actually is and the structure it contains.
I can’t ever get them to come outside with me. They prefer to sit inside watching reruns on TV.
..Hmmm, have these people never heard of the internet ?? I can find video’s, photo’s and animations of much more than just the Milky Way 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whether it is cloudy out or not !
..Wow, 4 hours to get posted !! Why bother ?
As someone who has 2 telescopes, a 120mm mak and an 8″ dobsonian, and does sky viewing at times (been lazy this past year or so)i know about light pollution, it amazes me how much MORE you see at night in darker skies and how bright the stars are. I live in a “white” zone and can see only the brightest of stars at night. i go 50 miles to a red zone and can see -naked eye- about twice as many stars, going to a black zone..is georgeous.
I work for sports lighting company — a market rapidly transitioning away from traditional HID lamps to using LED light sources. Having “point sources” of light in the form of LEDs makes it possible to use advanced optics to very precisely direct light to where it is needed while eliminating the vast majority of “spill light” and glare. Street lighting is also rapidly transitioning to the use of LEDs, and my company has also provided LED lighting of some very recognizable architectural structures, including some national monuments. With time, it should be possible to have high quality outdoor lighting everywhere it is needed while substantially reducing light pollution. At the same time, energy consumption is also greatly reduced.
Kerry
I am glad to hear from you the industry is moving towards more directional LED lighting. Perhaps you can tell me why so many illuminated playing fields run their lights all night and why this is seemingly a common practice. I can understand grounds keeping at night but I never see groundskeepers.
My crazy personal schedule has me doing two inner-state- very late night drives every week. Public school and local government owned illuminated venues are commonly lit up.
I would think the electricity savings alone -assuming HID lightly- would pay for a timer operated power off switch.
Or how about a specialized switch that detects motion on the field and powers off some time after motion is no longer detected.
Beats me why a typical sports facility would have lights on all night… the electricity costs would be very prohibitive. We offer controls for our systems that can be used to automatically schedule lights on and off, with one major goal being to prevent unplanned or wasteful usage. Some facilities may have some portion of their lights on all night for security purposes, but on-field lighting for sporting events requires a lot of power so having them on constantly definitely is not the norm.
One downside to HID lighting is the time required for the lights to come up to full illumination once they are turned on. So a facility with sporadic nighttime usage might need to leave them on… but that doesn’t apply to most sports facilities. With the “instant on/off” capability of LED lighting, this problem can essentially be eliminated. LED lighting can also be operated at fractional power settings depending on need (e.g. security, maintenance, general purpose usage or “event” lighting) which further improves efficiency.
Abuzuzu, you know what ‘romantic’ says :
the deepest darkness of soul.
obviously no blog is free of.
better with all american
https://www.google.at/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-browser&q=wc+fields&gfe_rd=cr&ei=K21fV6y6Ia3s8wfvjpfQCA#q=wc+fields+pets+and+little+
Abuzuzu,
The hypocritical don’t dare to ask their mayors regarding the high electricity bills on nightly sports fields to prevent child abuse.
full stop.
Light pollution, or what others call being able to see if someone is sneaking up on you at night.
Bingo, Mark!
Light pollution shines on carbon pollution. What to do? what to do?
Enjoy Western prosperity.
If you want to see the Milky Way, just drive into the country or sail to sea.
It’s still there.
Don’t fret.
No, just light pollution. It’s light that goes up, not down to where it actually would do any good. Since transitioning to full cutoff LED lighting in my area, the skies are significantly darker, with no change in the lighting on the streets/sidewalks.
Light reflected off the ground still pollutes.
Not actually true. There is a positive correlation between light and crime. The IDSA had the reference. Essentially the brighter the light, the darker the shadows…. Where the bad people are.
” Essentially the brighter the light, the darker the shadows…. Where the bad people are.”
I don’t have but a single streetlight within a half mile, and I have a full shadow on my garage door from my neighbors about 50 sidewalk front light, in the middle of the night. It is amazingly bright when you’re trying to preserve your night vision.
Suppose to be a 50W sidewalk light.
You are confusing cause and effect.
Did the existence of lighting cause crime? Or did the existence of crime cause lighting to be installed?
When there is no lighting, everything is shadow.
If the criminals stay to the shadows the response of the citizen is two fold.
First, stay out of the shadows.
Second, do what you can to make sure there are even fewer shadows.
Not really. Your typical mugger likes to be able to see what he’s doing too. How would he be able to safely chose a target without being able to see? Research this and you will find that there are numerous studies that show no evidence that street lights prevent street crime and may in fact actually facilitate things like drive by shootings. Street lights do help prevent traffic/pedestrian accidents. That’s about all.
In general better lit areas indicate more wealth and that can attract some types of crime. Where I grew up there were about six houses in the valley and you could see their 60-watt porch lights at night until everyone turned in. One or two had 160-watt lights over the barn doors. Then in the mid-60s the first “city guy” moved in with his family. The first thing he did was put up a big, bright, neon yard light. His house was the very first house ever burgled in the valley and the thieves stole the light was well. The investigating deputy remarked that the light had been like a sign advertising the owner’s belief he had something worth stealing.
It’s those mindless polluters in NYC again.
Visit BAJA …… Only a few hundred miles of driving down the peninsular and the Milky Way is there to enjoy.
Yellowstone in February. Milky Way is intensely beautiful. Satellites galore.
One of the darkest places to observe in the USA is about 70 miles north of State College Pa – Cherry Springs State Park. Sky is incredible there.
I remember observing from the Arizona sky village in Portal Arizona, and being unable to identify constellations – because there were too many stars !
I would think that just 20 miles east of Barrow Alaska would be the darkest. Especially on those days when the Sun never rises, Of course you would have to contend with those pesky aurora lights though.
Dang, Probably North Korea then
I am an amateur astrophotographer of 30 years and in retirement live in a blue zone in the Sierra Nevada foothills. There are not many places left where you can live and do astrophotography from your backyard. If all lighting was designed to illuminate the ground then more people would still be able to see the Milky Way. All that light seen from space is simply wasted electricity.
Chuck, flying in above a city, there aren’t many lights illuminating the sky. Light pollution is mostly scatter from over-bright street and parking lot lights. Bright signs and parks added their own contributions followed by traffic and house lights.
If the greenie enviro-loons have their way, we will become more like North Korea. Of course, Al Gore and co. will still be lit up like Christmas trees.
Of course, you can’t expect the eco-elites to live the sad lives of the vast underclass.
I can see it now: “We had to cut off the electricity so you could see the Milky Way. It’s for your own good.”
+1 actually + many! Quote of the day for me ! ( PS, don’t give them ideas, delete asap).
No problem. Just introduce mandatory “Earth Hour” every second day, and the Milky Way will shine through.
Looks like an opportunity for an Oculus App…
When I lived in Lower Manhattan , I never was aware of the phases of the moon . Now at 2500 meters ( 8200ft ) , 30km from Colorado Springs and 70 from Denver , I always have a general idea .
I am quite surprised , tho , how strong the glows from both CS and Denver are here even on clear nights .
Somehow the Milky Way doesn’t seem as striking as it did when camping with Bucky’s Boys Club at 200m in Bannockburn IL 60 years ago .
Some of it could be light pollution.
Some of it is undoubtedly the eyes not working as well as they used to.
Too true
I am told that the name “Denver” means 1 mile above sea level.
I live in a rural area, turn the porch light out, step outside, and there it is.
Serious now:
Table Mountain Star Party
http://www.tmspa.com/
Held 15 miles north and 3,000 ft higher than where we live.
And here I thought it was a chocolate bar!
Like all real pollution, light pollution can be cut down but it takes money to invest in the technology. In other words, it is wealth that allows us the luxury of cutting pollution down. But the greenie-weenies don’t understand that. Instead, they want to attack wealth, by raising the cost of energy.
On the big island of Hawaii (home to multiple observatories at the top of Mauna Kea), street lighting is regulated to minimize light pollution. Lights cannot be white, but must be low pressure sodium (LPS) yellow or red and must be aimed down. This creates tensions between motorists who want well lit major roads and astronomers who want ambient darkness to get the best conditions for their telescopes.
One exchange from 2008 is summarized here. Astronomer Andrew Cooper defends the lighting restrictions.
But Hawaii is also transitioning to LEDs for street lighting, see here and here. Those date from 2012 and suggest the conversion would be completed shortly but having been there October last year, I can testify there are still plenty of LPS lights left.
None of the Hawaii regulations apply to automobile headlights, so there will still be some white light spillage.
Because most roads in Hawaii are not lit at all except in urban areas or at major intersections, I try to plan my driving so I’m not out after dark, especially not on the mountain roads. This creates tension between using daylight hours for safe transportation and maximum enjoyment of the beaches, but so far I’ve managed to deal with it.
Botched the first link. Exchange with Andrew Cooper: http://damontucker.com/2010/12/29/big-island-street-lights-vs-mauna-kea-astronomers-round-2/
Let’s ban electricity, NOW! /sarc
It isn’t the electricity or the light fixture that is the problem.
It is the photon flux.
So, let’s ban anthropogenic photons.
Oh, you mean the EVIL photons.
Time for the Photon Tax.
Hang on. Do you guys want to see the Milky Way or not? Do you even care about that kind of fluffy greenie stuff?
The irony is that a move to full-cutoff lighting fixtures for outdoor lighting would dramatically reduce light pollution as well as reduce the electricity usage by the fixtures by about 40% with no decrease in effective lighting.
The irony Jerry, the irony. Wait, you’re just taking the piss. Lol. This, like everything else, is an eco-elite plot.