looking for darkness

We climbed up Primrose Hill late last Sunday night, hoping to see the Perseids. We did everything wrong; early rather than late, the centre of London, and only hung around for a while (hard to keep a very tired 7-year old interested for long) but we still glimpsed a few. And it was rather magical.

And then, today, I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker about light pollution (abstract here, no full text online apparently). And it struck me that this might be one of those issues you could get people interested in. There'll have to be a huge bundle of ideas, actions and activities if we're going to get more responsible in our energy use - not one huge idea - and this might be one which catches people's imagination, because it seems to have everything going for it. Lighting the ground and not the sky saves money, increases safety and gives us back the stars.

Some points from the article:

Someone looking at the night sky over New York sees less than one percent of the stars that Galileo would have seen.

Installing 'full cutoff' lighting (ie lighting that shines where you want it, not up at the sky and not straight in your eyes) in public spaces can save huge amounts of money in energy bills because you can reduce the wattage per light.

And I really liked the fact that you can often increase visibility by decreasing the amount of lighting.

Because our eyes adapt to the brightest light present, if you've got a huge 'glare bomb' - an unshielded light - all it really does is create more darkness, because our eyes can't adapt to see anywhere other than the immediately illuminated area. (Doesn't there seem to a big juicy metaphor in there for something?) This often means that lights installed in the name of safety just end up creating huge pools of darkness for criminals to plot their dastardliness.

And there's a huge emotional pay-off - we'd be able to see the stars again. As opposed to the interior of Top Shop - which looks like this at night:

How is that amount of lighting necessary all night?

You can find out more at The International Dark-Sky Association, who have a splendid motto - Carpe Noctem.

 

Comments

[Hrishi]

Thanks for pointing out the issue of stores keeping all their lights on at night.

For all the talks of major plans to tackle climate change, some obviously stupid things like these are just completely ignored. Not just one but every single shop on the high streets of UK do this. I do not understand why. I also do not understand why this is never ever mentioned in the media.

It seems like the developed world is totally reluctant to change its ways fundamentally. I was schocked to read this story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6957328.stm

So, basically the west will try to bail out of cleaning up their act until the next big disaster? There seems to be no basic sense of judicious use of resources.

[Jim Holt]

I remember visiting the London Planetarium as a lad, when they had the old mechanical star projector that looked like some kind of strange black insect-like robot. We were shown a comparitive view of the night sky as it is in contemporary times, and as it would have appeared before industrialisation, abundant streetlighting, or indeed coal fires. It was incredible how much of the sky we blot out, and something I later witnessed when visiting places in Thailand and Mexico, away from the madding crowds in places where the electricity was generated on the spot, and promptly switched off at 9pm. It's amazing how much time can pass while lying on your back on a beach star gazing.

[Stefan G. Bucher]

A few years ago I went to San Francisco and some friends spirited me away to a hilltop somewhere in deepest Marin. We kept winding up and up and through the woods to emerge, finally, in a parking lot filled with amateur astronomers and their gear. It was a new moon, and I immediately established my bona fides by pointing at the sky and asking "Wow, what's the deal with that cool vertical cloud?"

How the hell am I supposed to know what the Milky Way looks like when I live in Los Angeles?

In other news, I got to enjoy last night's total lunar eclipse, even from my light-polluted porch. It’s very interesting to see the eclipse through the 20mm lens, though the viewfinder, and with the naked eye. Very different experiences all.

Through the regular lens the Moon reminded me of a Frazetta drawing, through the viewfinder it appeared like a bright orange Star Trek planet, but with the naked eye the moon looked like it’s a slowly glowing piece of coal. No wonder the ancient civilizations went crazy with the eclipses. It’s very impressive stuff!

Carpe Noctem! I'm on board. If you need a black-on-black logo let me know. Carpe Varnish!

[Hashem Bajwa]

Check out Google Sky:

http://earth.google.com/sky/