To think that the night sky around LA was dark enough at some point to make celestial observations. See also Castel Gandolfo outside of Rome, the office of the Vatican Observatory:
Certainly there are bigger problems in the world, but it'd be nice if light pollution could be taken into account when making policy decisions (like which street lamps a municipality will buy):
While light pollution is a problem, with lasers and adaptive optics observations can be made. From the article:
"The solution is lasers. Lick’s Shane telescope wields an adaptive optics system, which fires a beam into the atmosphere. “Adaptive optics measures the turbulence hundreds or thousands of times a second, and then changes the shape of a special mirror, called the deformable mirror, to take away the blurring,” says Max.
The Shane telescope also has a larger mirror than Hubble: 3 meters compared to 2.4 meters. So if there happens to be a bright enough star nearby your viewing target, Max says, “you can get the same kind of spatial resolution that Hubble gets, because our telescope is more or less the same size, and we're taking away the blurring of the atmosphere with adaptive optics.”"
Lasers+Adaptive optics compensate for the blurriness induced by the atmosphere, but not for the light pollution. The whole sky glows because of it, and items significantly fainter than the glow baseline are lost, even in long exposures.
I visited La Palma in the Canary Islands just before the lockdown in Spain. La Palma has a huge observatory, and I learned that the island is a starlight reserve. They take active measures to diminish the effects of light pollution, such as using special street lights, limiting flights at night, etc.
If you ever get a chance to visit, La Palma is am amazing place.
It's hard to tell where you are, but if you're in the bay area and know enough to post what you did, you probably should also know that the city of San Jose did specifically select street lamps based on light pollution concerns from the astronomers at Lick.
As a transplant, it took some getting used to, because the low pressure sodium street lamps are roughly the same color as yellow stop lights. For better or for worse, the city of San Jose has been replacing the LPS lamps with LEDs for the past 6 years, but at least they're down-facing and create less light pollution than many other options.
I've been up that way many times, by bike, by motorcycle, by car. Although the road to the top is relatively tame (7% max grade), the surrounding area is super steep and hilly. Great for hiking and mountain biking, not so much for fire fighting. It's also very, very dry. Major props to all the fire fighters who labored to save such a historically important facility.
If I recall correctly, the road to the top is relatively tame because it was built to deliver construction materials to the observatory, and that was before motor vehicles.
I visited last November from the San Jose side, and the road was a nightmare. It's a small, windy road through the mountains with little visibility. I could see it being extremely difficult to navigate with firetrucks as it took me quite a while with my Prius.
The front road (Mt. Hamilton Road / Hwy 130, starting at Alum Rock) is very winding because the grade was limited to allow horse & cargo carriage to summit the peak. Limiting the grade means extra turns. The back side roads, down to Livermore or Patterson, as well as the faster front cutoff (Quimby Rd) were built for vehicles and are much steeper and a little straighter.
Lenses, actually. The Lick Observatory is home to the second largest refracting telescope in the world. It’s a sight to behold, and the road is a stunning drive in it’s own right as noted.
ETA: it’s an ass-kicker going up on a bicycle. It’s 22ish miles up, with like one brief respite near the county park.
Last time I went up, I passed a sheriff (or maybe CHP) sitting on the side of the road and he was looking down the hill.
My friend and I passed by thinking nothing of it. Then while hanging out up at the Observatory, we noticed a sheriff helicopter flying nearby.
30 minutes later we started heading down, got maybe a half mile down Mt. Hamilton Rd. from the Observatory, only for the whole road to be blocked because an abandoned vehicle had been found at the bottom of the canyon. LEO's needed to block the road for fire trucks and other first responders and then wait for the chopper to assist with investigating the vehicle.
We ended up being stuck for a couple of hours and got to watch the first responders navigate the road and terrain.
That renewed my appreciation and respect for the risks they take in that kind of environment.
In about the same time, you could have gone down the east side and come out the Mines road in Livermore. That is a great road by itself, especially in the Spring. I’ll be curious to see what damage the fires caused.
Yeah, we considered that! I've driven Mines Rd. from Livermore to the Junction. But I didn't have a full enough tank of gas to feel comfortable going that way.
Me too. All my favorite driving roads and areas to explore have been affected by the fires.
Mount Hamilton is one of my favorite places on earth, even though I've only been there twice. You feel like you're seeing the best that nature and man can produce, both at the same time. I'm glad they were able to save the observatory.
I was once a student at a community college taking an astronomy course and was required to visit an observatory to write a reflection piece. I ended up visiting Mt. Wilson Observatory. Boy, did I think my beat-up, 2002 Honda Civic coupe would not make it up there due to the incline - my friends and I were in awe of how we were driving "in the clouds" (or maybe it was just fog?). I loved it up there! If I recall correctly, they had this shack where you could buy your tour pass and food.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] thread* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Gandolfo
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0DAKaR16cY
Certainly there are bigger problems in the world, but it'd be nice if light pollution could be taken into account when making policy decisions (like which street lamps a municipality will buy):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution
* https://www.darksky.org/our-work/lighting/
I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing the natural night sky without having to travel great distances:
* https://kottke.org/17/12/lost-in-light-how-light-pollution-o...
"The solution is lasers. Lick’s Shane telescope wields an adaptive optics system, which fires a beam into the atmosphere. “Adaptive optics measures the turbulence hundreds or thousands of times a second, and then changes the shape of a special mirror, called the deformable mirror, to take away the blurring,” says Max.
The Shane telescope also has a larger mirror than Hubble: 3 meters compared to 2.4 meters. So if there happens to be a bright enough star nearby your viewing target, Max says, “you can get the same kind of spatial resolution that Hubble gets, because our telescope is more or less the same size, and we're taking away the blurring of the atmosphere with adaptive optics.”"
If you ever get a chance to visit, La Palma is am amazing place.
https://www.aboutlapalma.com/la-palma-astromony.html
https://photos.app.goo.gl/JcD1bCUb1asU9VcE8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona#Light_pollutio...
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-San-Jose-install-yellow-street...
https://mthamilton.ucolick.org/public/lighting/Pollution2.ht...
As a transplant, it took some getting used to, because the low pressure sodium street lamps are roughly the same color as yellow stop lights. For better or for worse, the city of San Jose has been replacing the LPS lamps with LEDs for the past 6 years, but at least they're down-facing and create less light pollution than many other options.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Barrens#Dark-sky_pres...
Current at-risk:
* https://www.blogto.com/travel/2020/08/torrance-barrens-dark-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6216_San_Jose
Source: Grew up there
ETA: it’s an ass-kicker going up on a bicycle. It’s 22ish miles up, with like one brief respite near the county park.
My friend and I passed by thinking nothing of it. Then while hanging out up at the Observatory, we noticed a sheriff helicopter flying nearby.
30 minutes later we started heading down, got maybe a half mile down Mt. Hamilton Rd. from the Observatory, only for the whole road to be blocked because an abandoned vehicle had been found at the bottom of the canyon. LEO's needed to block the road for fire trucks and other first responders and then wait for the chopper to assist with investigating the vehicle.
We ended up being stuck for a couple of hours and got to watch the first responders navigate the road and terrain.
That renewed my appreciation and respect for the risks they take in that kind of environment.
Me too. All my favorite driving roads and areas to explore have been affected by the fires.