Light Pollution 
and us all

Left The night sky from the city
Right The night sky from a dark site.
both photographs by Terence Dickinson, from his book, Summer Stargazing
same film, lens, exposure time and atmospheric conditions.
One can recognize Taurus and the Pleiades in the center of the field, rising Orion at the bottom and Capella at middle left. A planet (Jupiter?) is also present in the field and has moved between the exposures. The exposures have probably been taken two or three months apart.
Turning her/his eyes to the sky, the urban dweller can no longer see the stars. Light escaping mainly from poorly designed streetlights produces an ugly glow over today's cities. This growing menancing glow has killed the stars the older of us grew up accustomed to see over our heads evey clear night. Our kids might never see the stars the way we saw them. Or they might not see them at all.

Soon enough, there will be no place to go for professional astronomers either. Urban development threatens all major observing sites in US. And not everybody can get time for the now dying Hubble Space Telescope or the plethora of ground based observatories.

The other not so obvious facet of the problem is that people who pay for all this wasted light is us, the taxpayers. The megawatts and billions of dollars spent to light the skies come from our pockets and go straight to the skies through the utility companies pockets. 

It's not only astronomers problem. They lose the most, the sky and the money. But we all loose the money.

Fortunately, there are solutions for the problem. Modern, street lights are available from most public utilities companies. The ubiquitous, cobra-head design street lamp can be also retrofitted with flat lenses or full cutoff shields. Wasted light would go downwards. We would all see the stars again. The streets will be safer with better lighting, without the prison yard look they have now. Of course, with more efficient design and light sources, utility company profits may go down. But ordinary people, the dreamers and stargazers and taxpayers in us all, have to be made aware of the possibilities. The following pages are about the problem and solutions. About the possibilities.

  CONTENTS

 © Alin Tolea, 2000