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.
Growing up in Scotland, and being a keen mountaineer, I’d seen plenty of bright night skies, or so I thought. My first real eye-opener was sleeping on a picnic table just off I-25 in New Mexico, when I was doing a drive-away delivery to Albuquerque to facilitate a climbing trip. Dazzling. I almost didn’t sleep at all, just looking up at the stars.
About a year later I was working on a drilling rig in the Great Sandy Desert in Northern Western Australia. Equally beautiful, especially after a shift change at midnight. I could just walk off into the darkness and gaze up. A bit disorienting though. Being used to the northern constellations, it took me a while to get my ‘fix’ and know which way was ‘up’.
Oh dear, “light pollution.” What next, will they start issuing permits to people so they can turn on their lights at night?
/snark
It has been a major issue for astronomers for a long time. On the island of Hawaii, which has the biggest collection of major telescopes in the world, street lighting in towns is controlled and restricted to some extent. Street lights are of strictly controlled wavelengths, which the astronomers can filter from their images.
I know all the junkies in my area hate all that nighttime light pollution, too. They go out of their way to avoid well-lit places.
I moved out here in northeastern Colorado Springs in 2001. I had one of the first houses built in this area — suburbs stopped at my front yard. I could see the Milky Way and shooting stars. One night, I was driving home, and my wife asked me what was wrong with the sky. I looked up, and it was Northern Lights — the sky was red, with tinges of green. I went home and looked at the space weather site, and the meter showing Bz was pegged at -60. That was the result of one of those giant solar flares that occurred at the time. Now, I live in the middle of “greater suburbia”. I can only see the Moon and the brightest stars. Wish we could go back to the way it was when we moved here. 🙁
yep–isn’t something how folks move to the country and bring all the city BS with them. Could not believe how every home in my first urban escape location was lit up like day all night long. Fortunately where I have managed to wind up there is only one powerpole nightlight-about 1/4 mile away which I can block with the trees, and while the nearest city casts a distinct glow, it is low to the SE horizon and the view from my front yard is quite spectacular. For the first time in what has been a rather long life, I have seen the rings of Saturn through my telescope.
As both an (amateur) astronomer and lover of civilisation, I have to say I am conflicted about this. Our cities and roads and lights, and all the progress that comes with them, are amazing and wonderful human achievements. But the visible cosmos is amazing and wonderful too, and we deprive ourselves of it for no good reason.
Just point the lights exclusively down at the ground.
I had no truck with activist astronomers who teamed up with the greens to turn the lights off. I said at the time that technology would eventually provide for energy efficient lighting and astronomers would be thrown under the bus. And I was right. Broadband LED lighting is a disaster for astronomy if it is carelessly pointed up into the sky, and most of what I’ve seen here in the UK is. Climate obsessed authorities don’t care, so long as they can tick the “LED” box.
Broadband LED lighting does offer an attractive night light if it’s done well. So…
Just point the lights exclusively down at the ground.
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Well, for those of you who have not seen it, take solace from the fact that the detail of what you would see does not exist 🙂
Just seeing it is not really enough. To fully appreciate it one needs a very clear atmosphere. A frosty night is best here in NZ. I grew up with it and it remains the same
One situation that I suspect over 90% of humanity have not experienced is complete silence. I have experienced it on only 2 occasions: in a cave and in a desert at night
Whether a millennial will miss the Milky Way or not is a lamentable argument, but not as important as the cause of light pollution on nocturnal fauna. Ever wonder why moths are drawn to artificial lights? Its because the of the aeons of evolution that allowed them to navigate using the only night light available, the MOON. Now with millions of artificial lights illuminating the night the poor moths don’t stand a chance of navigating.
An astrophysicist was on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me a couple of years ago. It was a rebroadcast. The astrophysicist had just won the Nobel (2011) so they had him on. He said 73% of the observable universe is invisible to us. We have no clue what’s out there. Another 25% is Dark Matter and they have no clue what it is either. We, and our instruments, can only see 3%.
OK. That one is w-a-y above my pay grade. How can it be invisible and observable at the same time? And how do we know it’s 73% when it’s invisible and “We, and our instruments, can only see 3%?
My guess is that there’s a good argument going on somewhere over those numbers.
At Balranald, western NSW, Australia, we walked outside of town one evening and lay on the ground in an orchard to stare at the sky. When your eyes get used to it you can see the spiral arms of the galaxy.
It is much more fun to remember my days as a bum than it was to live through them, but I discovered the rent at campgrounds was $25.00/week, and tended to camp during the warmer months. In some places they’d make me move out after a week, but other places let you stay if you were not a pest. In 1988 I moved out to Red Rock Campground west of Gallup, New Mexico on May 1 and stayed until October 23. The milky way became part of my life.
It is really wonderful to have such beauty to sleep with, especially when you’re so poor it is difficult to be a Don Juan. I developed abilities that I hardly noticed that others visiting the campground said were uncanny. For example, I knew what time it was by the position of the Big Dipper, and seemed to have a decent skill at forecasting the coming day’s chance of thunder by the brilliance of the stars.
It was a time I now recall fondly. They say “every cloud has its silver lining”, but out west it should have been, “Every hobo has his milky way.”
In 2015 I took my son to spend a night at that campground during a cross-country trip. They had added brilliant lighting, and paved the place for RV’s, and you couldn’t see a star. They called this “improving” the site. Americans have an odd idea of what camping is, these days. It is turning me into one of those grouchy old men who begins tales with, “When i was young, we…”
Actually the campground is east of Gallup.
Now that’s spiral arm wow…
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1602/PinnaclesGalaxy_Goh_1080.jpg
Milky Way over the Pinnacles in Australia
Image Credit: Michael Goh
Better yet, how about merger with Andromeda galaxy..
http://www.space.com/images/i/000/017/983/original/milky-way-andromeda-collision.jpg
This photo illustration depicts a view of the night sky just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Image released May 31, 2012.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger
Collision course
Not only is the Milky Way spinning, it is also moving through the universe. Despite how empty space might appear in the movies, it is filled with dust and gas — and other galaxies. The massive collections of stars are constantly crashing into one another, and the Milky Way is not immune.
In about four billion years, the Milky Way will collide with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. The two are rushing towards each other at about 70 miles per second (112 km per second). When they collide, they will provide a fresh influx of material that will kick of star formation anew.
The Andromeda Galaxy is obviously not the most careful of drivers. It shows signs of having already crashed into another galaxy in the past. Although it is the same age as the Milky Way, it hosts a large ring of dust in its center, and several older stars.
Of course, the imminent collision shouldn’t be a problem for inhabitants of Earth. By the time the two galaxies ram headlong, the sun will already have ballooned into a red giant, making our planet uninhabitable.
– See more at: http://www.space.com/19915-milky-way-galaxy.html#sthash.Be8NioZy.dpuf
“In about four billion years, the Milky Way will collide with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.”
See? We’re doomed!
I’m staying up late for that one, RoHa. It should be spectacular!
Where would we be without ‘light pollution’? Just like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.
Great post, Anthony; thanks for shining the spotlight (pun intended) on this very important issue, one that is long overdue for broad public discussion. I’ve reblogged it and added my own personal story as an introduction: https://astronomytopicoftheday.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/milky-way-now-hidden-from-one-third-of-humanity .
Aside from preserving the night sky, protecting the habitats of many nocturnal animals, fauna and flora, the proper functioning of all circadian rhythms (a number of compelling studies have been completed that show a direct correlation between the incidence of certain cancers and 2nd and 3rd shift workers) and the annual deaths of tens of thousands of birds that fly into buildings with the lights on 24×7, its a quality of life issue too – if you like the lights of Times Square, then go live in the city.
Regarding the observatories on the Large Island of Hawaii, I’m sure their lighting ordinances are such that any new lights will be full-cutoff LED fixtures with older fixtures grandfathered in – as older fixtures age and need to be replaced, the LED fixtures are installed. Most new LED fixtures are designed as “defacto” full cutoff fixtures by design, or done so as a response to over-lighting and urban sprawl. No one advocating for Dark Skies is suggesting that we plunge everyone into darkness, just a sensible application of modern lighting technology with an eye towards 100% full-cutoff (no up light above the horizontal).
weads wieder noamal –
midnightlightromancers. Tuh!
‘Light pollution’, an absurd inverted techno-snobism. Pure oxymoron, unadulterated cultural Marxism.
Sorry, I strongly disagree, I like looking at stars, and to image deep space objects background lighting makes a huge difference. And while I’d love to move out into the wilderness, it is not possible.
And mostly I’m not asking for anyone (other than my neighbors 🙂 ) to do without lights, I do ask they use lighting that minimizes light pollution, which in many cases is even cheaper than poor lighting.
Complete nonsense.
In Ireland or in Finland I only have to travel outside the city, where there are no lights, and on cloudless nights you can see it all.
In Dublin all one needed to do was go to Phoenix Park and you could use your telescope, or anywhere in the countryside.
It’s simply city lights. Clouds and not much else obscuring the night sky
I strongly disagree, background light greatly impacts deep space astrophotography, driving 30 is only slightly better, a 200 miles and you still to find a locally dark place, but I have a larger amount of equipment I need to power. And with proper lighting it could be far better.
“In the U.S., some of our national parks are just about the last refuge of darkness – places like Yellowstone and the desert southwest”
From my NC home, not in a national park, I can see it on a clear summer night.
Never could see it from anyplace I lived in CA though..
Another benefit of rising sea levels. Eventually all the lights will be out (think waterworld), we will be out to sea, and the night sky will be visible to all.