How so? They're looking for a change over time, so it would only really be an issue if we had some reason to think that people were changing how they responded to it in one year vs. the next.
so it would only really be an issue if we had some reason to think that people were changing how they responded to it in one year vs. the next.
Such as, gee I dunno, a change in the nature of peoples' light exposure, like spending more time inside and more time staring at a screen every year? No way that could possibly throw off peoples' subjective feeling of how bright the sky is, right? I'm sure there definitely hasn't been any other types of changes to human vision over time, like an increase in myopia over time. There also definitely hasn't been an increase in photophobia over time due to, among other factors, changing demographics resulting in older people making up a larger percentage of respondents, no siree.
"Participants were asked to use a website to view a selection of star charts for their location – each showing an incrementally greater number of the stars that exist in that patch of sky – and pick the chart that best matched what they could see. The researchers then created a model that related the number of visible stars to the brightness of the night sky."
Wouldn't all of those changes also equally effect how the people see the reference photos? I suppose myopia might if it was not corrected, but the vast majority is corrected.
Maybe you're having a bad day, but expressing yourself in such sarcastic terms isn't going to win you any friends. These things are hard to control for, but perhaps you can suggest a better method, bearing in mind that respondents to this survey are self-selected and presumably care about managing their own light sensitivity to some degree.
Which in itself is another flaw in ...whatever we even want to call this. It's not a proper study.
Yes, many here vote and (dis)trust statements based on tone of voice but despite the user losing their cool - for whatever reason - their criticism is still valid. It's reasonable to assume at the least moderate if not extreme bias in this self-selected group of people who're concerned with a lack of dark skies. Yet they didn't address nor attempt to control for it.
Due to light pollution - before anyone freaks out and starts worrying that the dome that the aliens put around us has gotten scratched up or something like that.
Back when street lights were all sodium vapor, you could use a filter and eliminate a lot of light pollution. These days sodium vapor streetlight are being replaced by LED lights, that emit a white light and also frequently turn bright blue when they begin failing before long, and filtering out this source of light is no longer so simple.
I fucking hate the blinding LED lights with a passion. Also, they fuck up the ecosystem in a major way. If we never get rid of them, they are visual DDT.
it's particularly obnoxious because LED lights can easily be made to be about the same place on the spectrum as the sodium vapor lights - it's just costs a few pennies more and has a slightly lower light efficiency so typical cheap short termism type thinking gets us the blue cold tone LEDS
Especially since at least the street lights are meant to light up the streets, not blind you. So the light efficiency is better, but the lighting efficiency is worse. It's not even short termism, it's wrong.
When visiting the Big Island of Hawaii I commented on the color of the street lights, which was unfamiliar. It was LED lights, but had a yellowish color IIRC.
I was told they were specifically designed to be easy to filter out by the telescopes on Mauna Kea, and used all over the island.
On a related note, can totally recommend visiting Manua Kea if you're in the neighborhood. We watched the sunset from the top of Mauna Kea and it was quite something.
Downward-facing, low pressure sodium lamps [1] used to be quite common in areas near major telescopes, as they are mostly monochromatic; for these, I don't think they were specifically designed for these areas, as much as they were an older lamp type that, when it was realized that newer lamps (eg, high pressure sodium) would be much harder to filter, ended up continuing to be used. It seems that, likely because there is so much experience developing methods to filter out light from LPS lamps, LED replacements have now been specifically designed to mimic them.
San Diego used to have many of these, apparently because of Palomar. There are a variety of arguments about safety and especially perception of safety that often leads to them being replaced with brighter, non-monochromatic lamps, though, depending on the political clout the telescopes have in the area.
There is no filtering of the led lamps possible, as they use phosphors to produce near continuum light. HPS at least had a collection of discrete lines you could avoid. LED lightning even taints 3nm wide emission line astronomy.
But astronomy can cope with light polution-- so long as it's relatively constant it can be calibrated out (leaving only its shot noise).
The human eye can't, but most people don't know what's been taken from them.
This was true of San Jose from the late 80s until recently, by agreement with UCSC / Lick Observatory. Not sure if it's still the case, and as the a peer comment says it was originally sodium lamps.
I thought I hated sodium yellow until LEDs became ubiquitous. They feel much harder to subconsciously tune out and draw my attention away from the road when driving much more than the old style. Maybe that effect will fade with time, but it hasn't happened yet.
I noticed that streets with LED lamps are far less visible from far away than ones with old "orange" street lamps. I can't imagine them being worse in terms of light pollution.
The difference is you used to be able to put a filter on the end of the telescope that blocks out all that orange, back when lights were mostly limited to the sodium emission spectrum.
Yup. Light pollution filters are practically useless now.
When I started observing 25 years ago, galaxies and nebulae were viable targets from my back garden, now I'm limited to solar system objects unless I load up my gear and drive a hour to my closest dark site.
Dark sky protection is definitely a thing and tourism worthy. I've known of this one I regularly visited for at least the last 15 years https://en.cieletoilemontmegantic.org
I find it funny that both your and parent comments destinations advertise as being "first", and probably Atacama stargazing tourists predate both of these initiatives
Eh, in this case I don't think the story hinges on keeping that secret, and if you know what era of sci-fi the story was written in you'd be nearly certain you're getting the "shocking twist! (but not really a twist)" ending anyway. The alert, seasoned sci-fi reader would be more surprised by almost any other ending than that one, really, in a '50s story of this sort.
Same thing Asimov usually did—a shower and/or stoned "what if...?" idea turned into a short story in a straightforward way—except Clarke took the extra step to, like, write actual characters and draw a setting and maybe even establish tone and mood beyond whatever the literal plot itself necessarily conveys.
I mean, the other way to be safe is if the government would actually arrest the crooks and throw them in jail instead of releasing them back onto the streets of SF and Oakland.
I mean, if that's the case then I'm ok with the residents of SF and Oakland running all the lights they want. But everyone else needs to turn them off and rest peacefully knowing their criminals are being shipped to SF and Oakland.
Only if your crime is smoking weed. There's a huge amount of "we won't do anything about it" for property crimes among police departments now. It's hard work, and not flashy, so cops don't do it. They have largely not been punished in any way for this.
The rates of violence are highly region dependent. Much of the US has quite low rates of violence, with a few localities that have quite high levels. Lead may well be a contributing factor, but there are probably a number of other causal factors at play in those populations.
> They have largely not been punished in any way for this.
Of course not, the lack of policing isn't because police abruptly became lazy, it's because of intense public pressure on cities to reduce the amount of policing. Since 2014, municipalities have been desperately trying to avoid becoming the next Ferguson by pressuring their officers to minimize discretionary policing (and the incumbent potential for "bad optics"). Many municipalities have passed laws which restrict police (e.g., "no pursuit" laws), some have made the job so unpleasant that their police departments have massive attrition (e.g., Chicago), and some others have passed formal policies to reduce the amount of police/policing (e.g., Minneapolis). Some cities elected soft-on-crime prosecutors who release or minimally-sentence anyone the police apprehend, further eroding the incentive of officers to make arrests.
It's not like police need to be punished for not policing, we just need to take away the negative incentives for policing. Of course, police accountability remains an issue, but the answer isn't a naive, blanket reduction in policing (instead, repeal qualified immunity, weaken police unions, raise the bar for qualification, mandate mental health evals, etc).
Comparisons of policies between different countries is notoriously error prone because often there are so many differences between the populations.
If you look at the US compared to itself over time, increased policing and encarceration (such as during the 90's) does in fact lead to lower crime. The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime.
I'm certainly open to the idea that sentences should be shorter, but I think that would need to come with a corresponding increase in the number of police - and in their willingness to enforce laws. This would be under the theory that increasing the odds that you will be punished is more of a deterrent than increasing the severity of the punishment.
> The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime.
This has been going on since ~2014, and you're absolutely spot-on that it absolutely correlates with reductions in the amount of policing. Roland Fryer (famed Harvard economist) and Tanaya Devi wrote a paper about this a couple years ago (but many other papers have similar findings): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w273...
Crime is complex, but we know with certainty that one of its causes is crime. If you grow up in a high-crime neighborhood, crime is a normal part of your daily life, and you are much more likely to engage in crime yourself (thus perpetuating the cycle) than someone from a low-crime community. As such, incarceration is addressing a root cause.
Further, virtually no one in American politics is arguing that incarceration is sufficient, but rather the debate is about whether or not it is necessary or if we can (for example) replace police with social workers and call it a day.
> Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far.
No, they're not incarcerating the right people.
They're incarcerating some financial idiots like SBF and Holmes and some weed users who don't threaten my physical safety at all and I frankly don't give a damn about, while the people running around punching Asian grandmothers in SF and smashing local Asian businesses are running free.
I mean, I'm glad that white collar crime is prosecuted, and I don't think the majority of people in prisons are "like SBF and Holmes". I just want to roll back policing to pre-BLM levels.
SBF didn't cause me to lose money. He isn't even remotely on my radar. You know who did? The fucker who broke into my car last year and stole $5000 worth of stuff. What's that guy doing? Roaming the streets breaking and smashing more cars, probably, considering the police dropped the case.
White collar damages are more indirect but they hurt society just as much if not more.
Imagine how much better US cities would be if the white collars that pushed oxicontin and fentanyls by corrupting doctors, officials and insurance companies had been more scared of consequences. But no, most of them still roam free.
I haven't followed closely, but what laws were broken in this case? Would stiffer penalties or more aggressive prosecution have landed these guys in jail? (I'm not arguing against your larger point about the damages of white collar crime, I'm just curious about these examples)
Two cities in one state in one country are not even remotely relevant to this discussion, but a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century: https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+property+crime+statistic
Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people.
We have one of the most punitive criminal justice systems in the world and the highest incarceration rate of any country. Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them.
They'd be productive, contributing members of society, instead of a huge drain on society. Keeping people in prison is very expensive.
> Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people.
I agree with rehabilitation, but I personally would like to be alive tomorrow, which is why I do not choose to live in Oakland.
> Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them.
These two can happen at the same time. It's less about punishment, and more about making everyone else feel safe. If they want to create a "city of crooks" in the middle of Nevada that isn't a punishment but a rehabilitation center I'm all up for that.
> a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century
This is a generic argument against progress. Imagine if we shrugged off vaccines because "the pathogen-derived death rate is trending down over the last 200 years" or if we rebutted #metoo with "a friendly reminder that women's rights are trending up over the last 100 years". Just because something was worse 50 years ago doesn't mean we should content ourselves with a worsening trend now.
> Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people.
If the premise were true, crime should have gone down in the face of the red-hot labor market we had been experiencing over the last few years. Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection. In the meanwhile though, the soft-on-crime approach to violent crime (both with respect to reducing the amount of discretionary policing and catch-and-release approach to prosecution) appears to be (predictably) devastating communities and (predictably) further perpetuating the cycle of violent crime.
> If the premise were true, crime should have gone down in the face of the red-hot labor market we had been experiencing over the last few years.
The rising-tide "red-hot labor market" didn't lift all boats, the pandemic severely impacted service industry workers, inflation / cost of living impacts low income people far more than anyone else, wealth consolidated at an extremely accelerated pace during the pandemic...
> Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection.
Which part of "the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world" did you not understand?
The nordic countries are particularly successful at this.
Turns out that universal healthcare (including proper mental health services), social safety support systems, and a detention systems working to help people before putting them back into society, work better than just shoving people into a concrete cube and tossing them out on the street into a society heavily stacked against them with a parole officer breathing down their neck. Gee, I wonder why they return to crime here?
> Which part of "the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world" did you not understand?
Suggesting that "the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world" implies that some significant number of Americans would reject rehabilitation demonstrates a complete and obvious failure to reason, and personally I find it weird that you would broadcast that publicly but carry on...
> Turns out that universal healthcare (including proper mental health services), social safety support systems, and a detention systems working to help people before putting them back into society, work better than just shoving people into a concrete cube and tossing them out on the street into a society heavily stacked against them with a parole officer breathing down their neck. Gee, I wonder why they return to crime here?
Right, and like most Americans, I agree with those things, the difference is that I don't believe we should throw our most vulnerable communities to the wolves by sharply reducing policing without first establishing those other crime-deterring alternatives. I don't think it's sufficient to say "we'll definitely address the root causes one day in the future, so it's totally fine to reduce policing now". And indeed, that's what was demanded: BLM was an anti-policing movement first and foremost and "defund the police" and "abolish the police" were not euphemisms for "establish a stronger social safety net before reducing policing".
Yep, the "common sense" that it makes it easier to see evil-doers is quite wrong.
When a property, building, etc is dark - someone up to no good has to use light to see what they're doing, and that stands out much, much more.
You probably wouldn't notice someone at the front door of a business as you drove by at night if it's well lit, but if it were unlit , you'd probably immediately notice a flashlight.
There's a reason behind the "must be a full moon" saying. People up to no good back before outdoor lighting was a thing would use moonlight to be able to see what they were doing.
"When a property, building, etc is dark - someone up to no good has to use light to see what they're doing, and that stands out much, much more."
Erm, no. If you trained a bit, and it is not pitch black (which it never is, in the cities) you can move and act very well without light. Also there is nightvision, which got quite cheap.
What works well and is a good compromise to protect from thieves and co. is light activated by motion detectors.
> Erm, no. If you trained a bit, and it is not pitch black (which it never is, in the cities) you can move and act very well without light.
The above comments’ point is literally that places are overly lit due to surrounding always on lights. The aforementioned properties and buildings with excessive lights are part of what make cities so bright.
You’ll have a hard time convincing people to trade lights that make them feel safe right now here on Earth for the ability to see some stars light years away that they don’t give a fuck about.
They dont care. That's their prerogative. I say this as someone who doesnt like light pollution. Dont live in a city if you're so bothered by light pollution and people in close proximity.
This is common misconception about what "light pollution" actually is. It is about the proper arrangement of light fixtures so that the light points towards the ground and not horizontally or up into the sky.
Maybe one day we'll get smarter motion detectors (like a camera and a computer[0]), that can watch a larger area. A light that only turns on when someone is nearby is an even better deterrent.
[0] And hopefully they don't require an internet connection and send all video to a central location.
I have been getting LED bulbs that have built-in motion detectors recently. I replaced all of my exterior lights with them and they work very well. You can even temporarily disable the motion detector by just turning the bulb on and off 3 times quickly. They’re from GE, but others make them.
https://www.gelighting.com/led-lights/bulbs/e26/ge-led-motio...
I've had motion sensing lights for a long time. I've never had any issues. They have sensitivity setting for range, time setting for how long they stay on, etc.
Someone came to my house after dark. I'm pretty sure they were lost. I watched the replay on my cameras and I can confirm that the light clicking on made them jump (not that it would make everyone jump, but still).
The thing is if you can see the result of the light shining on the objects of the ground, it also goes up past your eyes into the sky, only to create the reflective smudge there.
When one light among many is out, that area becomes a target. When no lights are on, nothing sticks out. And your evolved night vision will actually work for the places between where lights used to be.
Be aware of attributing causal relations to that which has no indication it is not just a coincidence. Lights definitely don't effect catalytic converter thieves in many cities like SF. That's not to say lights in other locations have the same lack of effect. One incidence is not enough to say anything.
But also all lights are not equal. All lights are not equal for safety and all lights are not equal for light pollution.
Light pollution could be vastly reduced without diminishing needed lighting if the light temperature is warmer and if proper fixtures ensure the light is directed only where needed instead of half of it going directly at my bedroom window like my last couple apartments have done, among other undesired locations.
To be clear that burglar agrees that having lights helps against being targeted:
"A dog. Well-lit exterior. Nosy neighbors. A car always parked in the driveway. Lights on in the house. Anything that would normally lead someone to believe that there is someone home."
It's probably safe to say the burglar would avoid homes that appear occupied by any measure. One of the older tricks in the books was to put indoor lamps on timers when you were planning to travel for a few weeks.
It should also be noted that outdoor security lighting is a different beast from general purpose or decorative lighting. Most homes have very patchy exterior lighting, with either plenty of glare or plenty of shadows. If it is known the house isn't occupied, poor lighting will do little to prevent someone from crawling in a basement window then walking out the front door.
A recommendation from neighborhood cops is things is a TV simulator, which is just a small box with LEDs that projects TV-like light. The notion is a burglar will think somebody is up late watching TV. Very low wattage and most of the light won't head skyward. Or if HNers' junk closets are anything like mine, an old monitor and a looping video playlist would do about as well.
I prefer motion sensing lights. A bonus is that they let me know if someone is nearby by clicking on. Interior lights or a TV are much better at convincing someone that the house is occupied.
Speaking of light pollution, months ago I experienced this phenomenon. This is taken hours after sunset. The moon is behind us. 403 westbound half hour out of Hamilton.
It was both incredibly eerie and calming. One of the most liminal night drives I’ve had.
Possibly a light pollution from industrial greenhouse. There is one near Wrocław (Poland) and tourists are constantly asking "what is that spooky light in the sky?".
There’s a cannabis greenhouse elsewhere in my region that creates a pillar of white light. It’s a completely surreal scene. Also pretty awful light pollution.
When my neighborhood here in Brooklyn switched over to LED streetlights I got very depressed. And angry. All of a sudden everything was drenched in this horrible white light. Plus there's a lamppost right outside our window, so my living room gets flooded in cold LED light. I complained multiple times to the city but they said it's just what it is now.
A year ago our condos switched over to LEDs on all outside building lights and I no longer feel comfortable just sitting on our stoop enjoying the city at night anymore. It just feels so harsh. I have so many good memories from hanging out on Brooklyn stoops at night, either solo or with friends. I miss that soft, warm NYC lighting.
I actually bought a bunch of light gels from B&H to do this on the lights on my stoop. I wish I could do it to the street lights and the outdoor lights mounted on the sides of our building!
The lamppost is something like 27 feet and the ones on the outside of our condos are two stories up -- I don't have a ladder in my tiny NYC apartment is really the main reason.
Sodium lights have fairly low impact on your circadian cycle. Melatonin secretion is delayed by light, but the effect is different based on the wavelength. LED does it a whole lot more. That may account for why you became depressed and angry.
This is a nice reminder that the atmosphere is such a pain for watching stars. If light pollution for sky-watching is a problem for you, citizen stargazer, please write to your local representative and ask them to quicken those space colonization plans.
Street lights are way too common. Let's phase them out entirely on non-pedestrian streets.
This is one of my favorite things about Palm Springs, which has almost no street lights. The darkness at night is truly beautiful. And it saves money and electricity to boot.
Maybe you could even get creative and have street lamps that dim up or down based on activity someday.
I recall now that sense of wonder at seeing the Milky Way as a distinct band across the sky. Many years now since I've seen it, and yet perhaps some people reading this never have.
Travel suggestion: Anywhere far from city lights where clear weather can be expected. The week of a predicted meteor shower might be ideal.
In the beginning of the modern era, electric light was fantastically expensive. People used just enough light to get by.
LEDs put out 7x as much light as an incandescent bulb, so people can use 3x as much light as they need and still save money on their power bill. I have a neighbor that has a string of bulbs along their driveway. These are left on all night every night. City code requires "fully shielded" lighting, but the city ignores its own code.
The tragedy of the increased amount of blue light in our nighttime environment is that there's a bunch of old research about the physiological mechanism behind high-energy blue photons causing inflammation in the eyes. This gradually results in people having reduced low-light visual acuity. Whoops.
I think people need to be told that artificial light is most useful to humans when it bounces off of things. This is why streetlights are mounted high on poles, and are designed so all the light is directed down.
Bulbs that can be seen are mostly emitting wasted light. A friend recently bought some light fixtures on the basis of looking nice when the lights are off. I think they're gradually realizing that staring directly into LEDs is not a pleasant experience.
In the old days, people bought light fixtures to hide the bulbs, and to direct the light where it's needed.
One of the bad things of our modern lifestyle/civilization, most of the population hasn’t got access to a dark sky. I think of myself as privileged since I have the possibility to visit a Bortle 3 or 4 location in less than an hour of driving.
Do yourself a favor, try to visit a really dark place, ideally with binoculars and a sky map and you’ll feel again connected with the Cosmos.
Exactly this, you can almost feel the depth and get a broader look at the whole celestial dome.
Be careful thought, since some people might get overwhelmed by this feeling of realizing your place in the universe. If I remember correctly there are a couple of related phobias, Astrophobia (fear of space) and Apeirophobia (fear of infinity).
This has actually occurred to people who have visited me (as I mentioned in another post I’m in a class 2, just barely off of a class 1).
I find it comforting, but one family member was throughly freaked out/overwhelmed. It was a clear, moonless night and they’d never seen something like it in their entire life.
My wife told me she would loose her control of the sphincter if she sees a sky full of stars. It is not exactly phobia but the feel of sort of galactic pressure.
I was in the Davis mountains at the McDonald observatory out in West Texas a few years ago. It was a new moon and after about an hour of letting my eyes adjust what was visible was almost overwhelming. Seeing satellites zoom across the sky under the backdrop of the entire universe was surreal.
Preferably in the summer when the milky way is visible, although the winter nights are longer and I usually manage to stay up late enough to see the stars. Remote mountain ranges in the Western US have had amazing views of the night sky (Steens, Santa Rosa Range, White Mtns, Argus Mtns).
Wow. What an awesome map. You can even see major highways in the western US.
I recently moved from the western US to the east. The public/opens lands are what I miss the most. I don't think many people out east even realize what public land is, how much there is, and how great it is. But this map really displays it.
Side note: What's up with Alberta? Same with northwestern North Dakota? I'm guess this is mining and/or oil operations?
Yes, they burn the gas straight off all of the fracking wells. Having been there at night it literally looks like you are in hell with flames in all directions from horizon to horizon.
Yes. I asked the same question about a decade ago, when a new edition of NASAs Blue Marble, or in this case Black Marble for the night maps made its rounds through the mass media :-)
You can have that as desktop background, with dynamically moving night/day terminator, and optionally real clouds and storm systems overimposed, btw :-)
Yes, I've personally been there. It is all the fracking and oil companies being allowed to simply burn off all the excess gas coming out of the wells in order to get the "more valuable" oil. They could invest in small pipelines to transport the gas from the wells to be processed and sold but they don't care. It literally looks like a war zone with flames shooting out of the ground in every direction from horizon to horizon in that area. I don't know how people can even live there.
I noticed the difference too when moving to a town just outside of Snowdonia in Wales, UK. It’s truly wonderful - you just don’t see it growing up in a city like Manchester.
It’s Bortle 4 where I live and it drops down to 3 just 20 minutes down the road. One of the best perks of living here.
Time is ripe to invest in a good telescope, I think :)
I'm in the Irish midlands and can _just_ make out the Milky Way on a good night, but we've been getting more and more neighbours and they all have a fetish for bright uplighting. I'm sure the sky will be gone soon enough.
i've never understood the uplighting. what are they lighting? air doesn't light up unless is it's foggy. is it cheaper because they can just put the fixtures on the ground? it is just so ineffective i honestly struggle comprehend the purpose
Heh - I come to my place in snowdonia and I lament the sky, as it’s a 4 - but then I spend the rest of my time in extremely rural Portugal, where my observatory lives, and it’s a 2 there. No accident - chose the spot in part because of the sky.
I recently picked up a SkyWatcher Heritage 130p for my kids and it unexpectedly became a new obsession. I have plenty of light pollution where I am and it’s still amazing to check things out.
The 130p gives approximately 3.5x the light your eye normally sees and it’s quite portable. It has been a great intro to astronomy for me.
A bad telescope is a lot of fun even in poor conditions. I got a splendid view of Saturn's rings in a Bortle 6 area. It's a simple thing, but seeing that with just optics is something I recommend everyone do at least once.
I bought a house out in the middle of nowhere in part for the dark sky. It's awesome to walk outside and see so much. Per this data, my house is at 19.9 μcd/m2, and if I drive/hike a few miles down the road, I can get to < 10 μcd/m2.
binocs are good, but you still need a decent form of stabilization. I know I tend to shop higher end because I know what I'm getting, but by the time I've priced out support and the glass I've nearly arrived at the price of a telescope with much high magnification.
so it all comes down to realistic expectation levels what can be seen. you don't want to spend the money and then be disappointed and get turned off to the experience as underwhelming.
Modern day MFT cameras like Sony's A7 series have amazing low light (the older A7sii is still my favorite) for doing live views when attached to a telescope. it then can be used as your day-to-day camera at other times for multipurpose use. for DSOs, they are great. for solar system objects other than the moon, they're a little underwhelming since the actual object will be such a tiny percentage of the image.
one thing to remember when buying gear is to only go as big as you can carry/assemble by yourself. getting something that requires 2 people to lift/carry means you can't use it unless you can convince someone to go along with you, we let's face it, it's definitely a hobby that leans towards the soloist. for someone like you that can do it from home without having to travel every. single. time. might be a bit less of an issue. just general advice for others that might come along
the only regret i have in buying my gear is that i'm at least 4 hours to a class 2 site, and i no longer have a car of any type let alone one that fits all of my gear plus camping equipment.
The feeling of being able to see a dark sky on a moonless night is amazing. For me, it's very spiritual, especially at a truly dark site, after my eyes adjust and I'm immersed in it. It's no wonder they call it "the heavens." It makes me sad that some people will never be able to experience it, and that I don't get to experience it more often. The feeling of cosmic insignificance and unknown is oddly comforting. Sometimes I wonder if lack of dark skies correlates with people being less religious.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!
(I don't think I need to attribute this to this readership, but in case I do, it's by Emerson. And if you didn't know that, I strongly recommend googling Nightfall.)
The Mendocino forest was where I spent the night one time for the Mendocino Rally, sleeping in the back of my truck, and the sky really looked 3D with all the stars.
The surface of the ocean is not great for star viewing because of the humid layer right at the surface.
I grew up in Florida and was many times 100 miles off shore at night. I was never astounded by the night sky until I drove through the middle-of-nowhere in Oregon as an adult.
I'd tell you to come up to norther Marin-- the prohibition on billboards here makes the night sky much darker than over the rest of the bay area. But it's gotten a lot brighter in just the last couple years--- the transition to LED outdoor lighting seems to be doing a tremendous harm.
Two years ago the milky way was naked eye visible at my home on good nights. It doesn't appear to be anymore.
You can still see the orion nebula and its blue h-beta glow with just some binoculars though.
I grew up in the sticks of Australia, and the Milky Way has always been a full and vivid texture of stars in my memory. Living in cities now I sometimes forget what I am seeing is the same night sky just much less vivid and visible. I should make an effort to see a clear night sky more often I think.
Looking at the map, it was class 1 (artif brightness 0.067)
I live in Perth – you don't have to go that far (maybe a hundred km) to get a good sky, but I rarely do. I was out at New Norcia recently, and it happened to be a very clear night. I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing – the Milky Way so apparent, not just as stars but as a sort of texture to the sky. We lose a lot of perspective when we drown that out.
> Do yourself a favor, try to visit a really dark place, ideally with binoculars and a sky map and you’ll feel again connected with the Cosmos.
Obvious caveat: bring light with you, enough to comfortably see at least 10m ahead when you're walking.
Just as many of us are not used to dark skies anymore, we also seriously underestimate how dark it is in places with no habitations/street light and the moon is not out. I sometimes found myself in forests with almost no visibility if I cut my torchlight.
Because there are huge flames of gas being burned off from fracking because it is cheaper for the oil companies to waste the gas in order to get the oil. Total and complete waste. Canada does not allow burning off of gas from fracking wells like that but the US does.
Unfortunately I live in a class 8-9 (5190µcd/m2) location right now, but recently I have been to a class 2 (6.41µcd/m2) location and in moonless nights the sky was indeed fantastic and incredibly immersive.
I have plans to move to the latter country in a few years time (for many reasons, but low population density and a lot of breathtaking nature/wilderness being among the top reasons).
I visited my family back in Belgium over the holidays - living in a village quite some distance from the nearest city . Being out at night I had a good view of the night sky and constellations. That made me. Realize how over the past year+ I had not seen stars (living in Toronto).
Definitely something I was not acutely aware of before, and I hugely enjoyed being able to look up and see them again.
I am lucky to have grown up in a village where we could see milky way at night with our naked eyes. A dim cloud of stars going from one end of sky to other.
Grew up in a Bortle 4 (spent a lot of time in a 3) and live in a Bortle 6 now. I miss the stars.
My wife grew up in an 8/9. We drove out west onetime and she had never seen the stars so visible. I can’t imagine growing up not seeing stars, but my children are about to do just that.
I belong to a local astronomy club, and was part of the "Light Pollution Abatement" group for a while. But I had to stop: persuading people that light pollution matters and that something should be done about it is almost impossible. Even some of the comments here indicate to me that few people really care.
So why do I? It is not just to see more from my telescope. It is because this is part of a very broad problem. The problem? That humans on this planet have not even considered how we can live in a state of stasis with this planet. Weather catastrophes, insect decline, crop failures to pollination problems, shortages of seafood: these are all symptoms of the root problem, and light pollution is just one more symptom.
I think the issue here is the same as recycling and carbon reduction. There's only so much us as individuals can do, our impact is extremely limited and negligible.
You'd need to convince the governments to do something about it, but that's a large task given there's a lack of money for lobbying and a lack of profits to encourage them to do anything about it.
You're right, but there are real system level dynamics and complex incentives at play, and you don't do the actual problem any justice with such a skin deep dismissal.
To someone who isn't up on the topic, it sounds a lot less serious than the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere that threaten the majority of life on the planet.
Maybe they're just prioritizing where they spend their energy. And maybe they're right.
What you are missing is that the energy to power all those unnecessary lights are one of the reasons for the gasses in the universe. And many of them are completely unnecessary.
Ok, a little drunk so I will tell you how I really feel.
You people care so much about light pollution, the environment and the future of humanity so much. Oh how grand and amazing of a person you must be.
Have you considered that many if not most humans endure enough suffering to not give a shit about humanity being destroyed you along with it? You care so much about the planet but the planet will be fine, it is humanity that is screwed.
So why should individuals that live their entire lives in suffering because of the very conditions humanity as a collective has encouraged and enacted give a shit about humanity?
You all know what is right like everyone else and you made your choice on what to be concerned about. So enjoy the fruits of your labour like everyone else!
I just want to sit in my back yard and not have laser-like LED streetlights burning my retinas at night. And yet, two of my neighbors have those set up in their backyards, so…
Must be nice to have a backyard to begin with. Your worries and concerns are valid just don't expect others to care about what happens in your backyard especially when they don't have one for themselves.
> why should individuals that live their entire lives in suffering because of the very conditions humanity as a collective has encouraged and enacted give a shit about humanity?
Because if they don't, they're descendents will suffer even more.
I mean, really what you're asking is "why should people care about others?", which feels like a whole branch of philosophy.
I hear you. Like many others I have seen what's wrong, seen the carelessness, the brutality. I'll skip the details. I've also seen what's right ... caring ... growing more obvious. Seen any horses or dogs or slaves whipped in the streets lately? Six-year-olds working 12-hour days?
Many have been misled and deceived and densensitized and cheated and de-liberated. Yet they will still help each other, and even complete strangers, with nothing visible to gain. Giving a shit makes a difference. That's how I really feel.
Whoo that got dark fast. We take it back, a little light here is okay. ;)
There is some suffering in the world right now. And it’s bad in places, there is no question. I don’t know exactly what suffering you’re thinking of or referring to, but if it were true that most people didn’t care at all about humanity being destroyed, then most people wouldn’t even be alive. The thing about humans is that we’re hard-wired to want to live, and because of that we have hope even when suffering is high.
One thing to perhaps consider is that those of us lucky enough to not live in suffering have the opportunity to help others and to reduce suffering. It is going to take some people caring about humanity, and caring about the planet, in order to improve on the very situation you’re talking about. Parent was pretty clear we’re talking about a symptom of a larger problem, and I guess if we were all face to face philosophizing over beers, you might even agree they were talking in large part about the same problem you’re talking about - us not taking care of each other. If nobody cared about this, then how is it going to get any better?? What can you and I do to make it better?
You missed my point. I personally don't care about what you care or don't care about. Do what you want. I'm just gonna care about shit that matters to me and most people are this way as well. It's a luxury to worry about even how our owen lives and wellbeing will be a decade from now and you expect people to care about the planet in 2050 lol. Ideals are cute but get real if you want real change.
You’re right, I did miss your point. How can you expect any change if nobody has ideals? You’re effectively arguing to keep the status quo by trying to make fun of people who care. You didn’t answer the important question: what can you and I do to make it better? If the goals in this thread aren’t valid in your opinion, then please offer some goals that are worthwhile. What, exactly, do you mean by “get real if you want real change”? What is “real change”, and who’s going to make it?
BTW, are you saying you don’t believe that deforestation, rising temperatures, and extreme weather caused by climate change is having any effect on human suffering? You seem to be making some unstated assumptions when you suggest that caring about the planet isn’t “real”.
You also seem to assume that we can’t work on more than one problem at a time. To me it seems like there are enough people that we might have the ability to address environmental issues in parallel with social, financial, and political issues. Does everyone need to care about the planet? Maybe not. So what’s wrong with some people working to reduce global warming while others work to, say, end the war in Ukraine, or reduce poverty in China, or end death by hunger or Malaria in Africa?
Again, missing the point. You are thinking in ideals and big pictures, missing the forest for the trees.
> BTW, are you saying you don’t believe that deforestation, rising temperatures, and extreme weather caused by climate change is having any effect on human suffering? You seem to be making some unstated assumptions when you suggest that caring about the planet isn’t “real”.
Now how could you have possible come to that conclusion based on anything I said. Let me use this to try and explain again: Do you want someone in rural arkansas to give a shit about global warming? Then find a way to help them get out of poverty. Do you want amazon tribal people getting evicted for deforestation to care about ukraine? Help them fight to keep their land and forest. Yoh want a black person in inner city LA to care about ukraine? You specifically must show them how you are helping fight homelessness and police brutality, Your big picture pleas for people to give a shit fall on deaf or apathetic ears because you are not addressing specific individual or group needs.
> You also seem to assume that we can’t work on more than one problem at a time.
Actually, I am saying the opposite of that. Most people do want things for everyone as a whole to improve. That isn't the same as giving a shit, as in voting, donating and acting to improve others' situation. That's why global warming isn't front and center in politics in most places that aren't wealthy. You see people like Greta portesting climate change, from nice northern european countries or wealthy counties in the US. If you want change, other people have to actively care.
Look at global warming again, yeah, it would be nice if that didn't happen. Personally, I don't even bother to vote because I have no problems that will solve. It's not that I don't care about global warming but that much more immediate and bigger things are not getting attention so I am not gonna give a shit because I have my own plate full on too of which I see a myriad of more immediate problems like chold sex slavery and human abuse right here in major US cities rampant, rape kits going back decades backlogged, deeply corrupt police I mean I fear going outdoors in the event I interact with a police officer and have my life ruined, and you have our country (US) headed for a civil so there is always that and much more. So yeah, I already survive major natural disasters and pandemics fine, being alive 10-20 years from now is a crazy idea for me, I hope you all make it ok but global warming then is more of a concern than an asteriod hitting earth or the sun dying in 20 million years nowhere near a million other things.
The solution from you: actually adjust your priority to give a shit about more immediate and impactful things for others near you, whoever they might be and since you are doing something for them they will care.
For me, my problems are my own I don't ask help from anyone but as far as others go: bring back cruel and public punishments for indisputably proven child abusers andn traffickers, let the goal of punishment be prevention where the very tought of the crime becomes unimaginable. No more hiding behind "it's not humane", these people chose to forfeit their humanity and humane treatment. Can't stomach that, then as much as it is one of my top things I care about let us all give up our privacy and have our digital and physical lives constantly monitored to prevent this. This must end now, at all costs. There is nothing more important that protecting the most innocent membersof society. A society that draws a line at preventing their abuse, especially at such a large scale deserves to be destroyed. Tell me you will help with that and I will do anything I can to help you with whatever priority you think is higher.
I hope I am explaining myself better. For a long time I used to arrogantly think that my problems were special. That even the very idea of a...
Last summer I visited Medawisla - a "National Dark Sky Park" on the edge of Maine's 100-mile wilderness, run by the AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club). It was a fantastic experience, highly recommended. I'm a life-long stargazer in my late 40's, and the only comparable night sky I've ever experienced has been on a sailboat.
I’ve been complaining about this in my area for years. Where I live, the main problem right now is private property owners (mostly condos and commercial real estate, not so much private homes), refusing to put lids (or hats) on their security lights to point it down. We’ve lost half the night sky since 2011 in my area due to these lights going up. In various discussions, I’ve been informed that the insurance companies are behind this problem. If we could convince them to mandate night-protective lighting (with metal hats pointing the light down) this would return our night skies.
I'd like to reduce sky glow. I use motion sensitive downward lighting and close my blinds. I'd imagine that and redesigned street lights could cut sky glow in half or better.
But there's not enough money involved to even create regulations/standards in building codes or for lighting manufacturers.
A couple years ago, my parents, suburb dwellers in the Midwest, were spooked by a burglary in their neighborhood. A detective from the local police department suggested to them, and many neighbors, that they keep their outdoor lights on all night. Now, the lights at the front and back doors, which we once turned out every night, burn all night long. I feel so sad—the loss of darkness, the unnecessary electricity consumption—I don't know what could turn things around.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadThis seems like a very lazy, inexact, and error-prone way of collecting data.
Such as, gee I dunno, a change in the nature of peoples' light exposure, like spending more time inside and more time staring at a screen every year? No way that could possibly throw off peoples' subjective feeling of how bright the sky is, right? I'm sure there definitely hasn't been any other types of changes to human vision over time, like an increase in myopia over time. There also definitely hasn't been an increase in photophobia over time due to, among other factors, changing demographics resulting in older people making up a larger percentage of respondents, no siree.
They're not being asked to evaluate the glow itself, but how many stars they can see in a particular region of the sky.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/19/light-po...
"Participants were asked to use a website to view a selection of star charts for their location – each showing an incrementally greater number of the stars that exist in that patch of sky – and pick the chart that best matched what they could see. The researchers then created a model that related the number of visible stars to the brightness of the night sky."
Yes, many here vote and (dis)trust statements based on tone of voice but despite the user losing their cool - for whatever reason - their criticism is still valid. It's reasonable to assume at the least moderate if not extreme bias in this self-selected group of people who're concerned with a lack of dark skies. Yet they didn't address nor attempt to control for it.
I was told they were specifically designed to be easy to filter out by the telescopes on Mauna Kea, and used all over the island.
On a related note, can totally recommend visiting Manua Kea if you're in the neighborhood. We watched the sunset from the top of Mauna Kea and it was quite something.
San Diego used to have many of these, apparently because of Palomar. There are a variety of arguments about safety and especially perception of safety that often leads to them being replaced with brighter, non-monochromatic lamps, though, depending on the political clout the telescopes have in the area.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp#Light_pollut...
But astronomy can cope with light polution-- so long as it's relatively constant it can be calibrated out (leaving only its shot noise).
The human eye can't, but most people don't know what's been taken from them.
When I started observing 25 years ago, galaxies and nebulae were viable targets from my back garden, now I'm limited to solar system objects unless I load up my gear and drive a hour to my closest dark site.
Dark Sky Alqueva - The First Starlight Tourism Destination in the World: https://darkskyalqueva.com/en/
I'm fairly certain this is from Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Nine Billion Names of God", partly used as inspiration for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Same thing Asimov usually did—a shower and/or stoned "what if...?" idea turned into a short story in a straightforward way—except Clarke took the extra step to, like, write actual characters and draw a setting and maybe even establish tone and mood beyond whatever the literal plot itself necessarily conveys.
now: starlink satellites are ruining astronomy for like sixty people whaaaa everything sucks!
this is why I no longer give any credit to online bellyaching
backyard astronomers: we don't care about you
if only starlink satellites could be arranged in the shape of Trump's face directly above laid-off Twitter engineers, life would be perfect
How is that working so far?
Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far. Maybe it would be time to stop treating the symptoms and try a different approach?
Property crimes are definitely under-policed.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
For state prisons, where the majority of criminals are incarcerated, 62% of prisoners are there for violent crimes.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-stat...
Of course not, the lack of policing isn't because police abruptly became lazy, it's because of intense public pressure on cities to reduce the amount of policing. Since 2014, municipalities have been desperately trying to avoid becoming the next Ferguson by pressuring their officers to minimize discretionary policing (and the incumbent potential for "bad optics"). Many municipalities have passed laws which restrict police (e.g., "no pursuit" laws), some have made the job so unpleasant that their police departments have massive attrition (e.g., Chicago), and some others have passed formal policies to reduce the amount of police/policing (e.g., Minneapolis). Some cities elected soft-on-crime prosecutors who release or minimally-sentence anyone the police apprehend, further eroding the incentive of officers to make arrests.
It's not like police need to be punished for not policing, we just need to take away the negative incentives for policing. Of course, police accountability remains an issue, but the answer isn't a naive, blanket reduction in policing (instead, repeal qualified immunity, weaken police unions, raise the bar for qualification, mandate mental health evals, etc).
If you look at the US compared to itself over time, increased policing and encarceration (such as during the 90's) does in fact lead to lower crime. The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime.
I'm certainly open to the idea that sentences should be shorter, but I think that would need to come with a corresponding increase in the number of police - and in their willingness to enforce laws. This would be under the theory that increasing the odds that you will be punished is more of a deterrent than increasing the severity of the punishment.
This has been going on since ~2014, and you're absolutely spot-on that it absolutely correlates with reductions in the amount of policing. Roland Fryer (famed Harvard economist) and Tanaya Devi wrote a paper about this a couple years ago (but many other papers have similar findings): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w273...
Further, virtually no one in American politics is arguing that incarceration is sufficient, but rather the debate is about whether or not it is necessary or if we can (for example) replace police with social workers and call it a day.
No, they're not incarcerating the right people.
They're incarcerating some financial idiots like SBF and Holmes and some weed users who don't threaten my physical safety at all and I frankly don't give a damn about, while the people running around punching Asian grandmothers in SF and smashing local Asian businesses are running free.
SBF didn't cause me to lose money. He isn't even remotely on my radar. You know who did? The fucker who broke into my car last year and stole $5000 worth of stuff. What's that guy doing? Roaming the streets breaking and smashing more cars, probably, considering the police dropped the case.
Imagine how much better US cities would be if the white collars that pushed oxicontin and fentanyls by corrupting doctors, officials and insurance companies had been more scared of consequences. But no, most of them still roam free.
That is some peak HN right there. Prisons are too full of bankers, amirite?
Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people.
We have one of the most punitive criminal justice systems in the world and the highest incarceration rate of any country. Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them.
They'd be productive, contributing members of society, instead of a huge drain on society. Keeping people in prison is very expensive.
I agree with rehabilitation, but I personally would like to be alive tomorrow, which is why I do not choose to live in Oakland.
> Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them.
These two can happen at the same time. It's less about punishment, and more about making everyone else feel safe. If they want to create a "city of crooks" in the middle of Nevada that isn't a punishment but a rehabilitation center I'm all up for that.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-h...
If the US rids itself of petty drug convictions the incarceration rate wouldn't be so high.
This is a generic argument against progress. Imagine if we shrugged off vaccines because "the pathogen-derived death rate is trending down over the last 200 years" or if we rebutted #metoo with "a friendly reminder that women's rights are trending up over the last 100 years". Just because something was worse 50 years ago doesn't mean we should content ourselves with a worsening trend now.
> Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people.
If the premise were true, crime should have gone down in the face of the red-hot labor market we had been experiencing over the last few years. Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection. In the meanwhile though, the soft-on-crime approach to violent crime (both with respect to reducing the amount of discretionary policing and catch-and-release approach to prosecution) appears to be (predictably) devastating communities and (predictably) further perpetuating the cycle of violent crime.
The rising-tide "red-hot labor market" didn't lift all boats, the pandemic severely impacted service industry workers, inflation / cost of living impacts low income people far more than anyone else, wealth consolidated at an extremely accelerated pace during the pandemic...
> Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection.
Which part of "the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world" did you not understand?
The nordic countries are particularly successful at this.
Turns out that universal healthcare (including proper mental health services), social safety support systems, and a detention systems working to help people before putting them back into society, work better than just shoving people into a concrete cube and tossing them out on the street into a society heavily stacked against them with a parole officer breathing down their neck. Gee, I wonder why they return to crime here?
Suggesting that "the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world" implies that some significant number of Americans would reject rehabilitation demonstrates a complete and obvious failure to reason, and personally I find it weird that you would broadcast that publicly but carry on...
> Turns out that universal healthcare (including proper mental health services), social safety support systems, and a detention systems working to help people before putting them back into society, work better than just shoving people into a concrete cube and tossing them out on the street into a society heavily stacked against them with a parole officer breathing down their neck. Gee, I wonder why they return to crime here?
Right, and like most Americans, I agree with those things, the difference is that I don't believe we should throw our most vulnerable communities to the wolves by sharply reducing policing without first establishing those other crime-deterring alternatives. I don't think it's sufficient to say "we'll definitely address the root causes one day in the future, so it's totally fine to reduce policing now". And indeed, that's what was demanded: BLM was an anti-policing movement first and foremost and "defund the police" and "abolish the police" were not euphemisms for "establish a stronger social safety net before reducing policing".
When a property, building, etc is dark - someone up to no good has to use light to see what they're doing, and that stands out much, much more.
You probably wouldn't notice someone at the front door of a business as you drove by at night if it's well lit, but if it were unlit , you'd probably immediately notice a flashlight.
There's a reason behind the "must be a full moon" saying. People up to no good back before outdoor lighting was a thing would use moonlight to be able to see what they were doing.
Erm, no. If you trained a bit, and it is not pitch black (which it never is, in the cities) you can move and act very well without light. Also there is nightvision, which got quite cheap.
What works well and is a good compromise to protect from thieves and co. is light activated by motion detectors.
The above comments’ point is literally that places are overly lit due to surrounding always on lights. The aforementioned properties and buildings with excessive lights are part of what make cities so bright.
In 1 week my catalytic converter was stolen. A week later the light was fixed (big job, corrosion spread in the wires).
Never had an issue before nor since. Lights matter a lot.
[0] And hopefully they don't require an internet connection and send all video to a central location.
Someone came to my house after dark. I'm pretty sure they were lost. I watched the replay on my cameras and I can confirm that the light clicking on made them jump (not that it would make everyone jump, but still).
But also all lights are not equal. All lights are not equal for safety and all lights are not equal for light pollution.
Light pollution could be vastly reduced without diminishing needed lighting if the light temperature is warmer and if proper fixtures ensure the light is directed only where needed instead of half of it going directly at my bedroom window like my last couple apartments have done, among other undesired locations.
They are fine as long as they are pointed down and not up or sideways (which creates glare):
* https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/light-distribution-of-outdoo...
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x2dz/iama_retired_ca...
"A dog. Well-lit exterior. Nosy neighbors. A car always parked in the driveway. Lights on in the house. Anything that would normally lead someone to believe that there is someone home."
It should also be noted that outdoor security lighting is a different beast from general purpose or decorative lighting. Most homes have very patchy exterior lighting, with either plenty of glare or plenty of shadows. If it is known the house isn't occupied, poor lighting will do little to prevent someone from crawling in a basement window then walking out the front door.
Wild animals large enough to trigger them are way too common.
Dark sky-certified lights are suggested but not required. With all that I’m still in a Bortle 5 zone, according to that map :(
It was both incredibly eerie and calming. One of the most liminal night drives I’ve had.
https://youtu.be/7SKoaRBkGiQ
https://miejscawewroclawiu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IMG...
There’s a cannabis greenhouse elsewhere in my region that creates a pillar of white light. It’s a completely surreal scene. Also pretty awful light pollution.
LEDs for consumers come in various color temperatures. Why are the streetlights all so cold?
A year ago our condos switched over to LEDs on all outside building lights and I no longer feel comfortable just sitting on our stoop enjoying the city at night anymore. It just feels so harsh. I have so many good memories from hanging out on Brooklyn stoops at night, either solo or with friends. I miss that soft, warm NYC lighting.
This is one of my favorite things about Palm Springs, which has almost no street lights. The darkness at night is truly beautiful. And it saves money and electricity to boot.
Maybe you could even get creative and have street lamps that dim up or down based on activity someday.
That indescribable feeling disappears with light pollution. It can be a street light nearby or an industrial estate hundreds of kilometers away.
Nowadays one needs to go into extremes to experience such conditions.
Travel suggestion: Anywhere far from city lights where clear weather can be expected. The week of a predicted meteor shower might be ideal.
LEDs put out 7x as much light as an incandescent bulb, so people can use 3x as much light as they need and still save money on their power bill. I have a neighbor that has a string of bulbs along their driveway. These are left on all night every night. City code requires "fully shielded" lighting, but the city ignores its own code.
What Is a Fully Shielded Light Fixture? http://we-watch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/FullyShielded...
The tragedy of the increased amount of blue light in our nighttime environment is that there's a bunch of old research about the physiological mechanism behind high-energy blue photons causing inflammation in the eyes. This gradually results in people having reduced low-light visual acuity. Whoops.
I think people need to be told that artificial light is most useful to humans when it bounces off of things. This is why streetlights are mounted high on poles, and are designed so all the light is directed down.
Bulbs that can be seen are mostly emitting wasted light. A friend recently bought some light fixtures on the basis of looking nice when the lights are off. I think they're gradually realizing that staring directly into LEDs is not a pleasant experience.
In the old days, people bought light fixtures to hide the bulbs, and to direct the light where it's needed.
Do yourself a favor, try to visit a really dark place, ideally with binoculars and a sky map and you’ll feel again connected with the Cosmos.
Here is a very good map to find a dark place: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
Some extra info on the Bortle Scale: https://astrobackyard.com/the-bortle-scale/
It's not just about the brightness of the stars, the sky literally looks 3d, which I didn't expect
Be careful thought, since some people might get overwhelmed by this feeling of realizing your place in the universe. If I remember correctly there are a couple of related phobias, Astrophobia (fear of space) and Apeirophobia (fear of infinity).
Something like the Total Perspective Vortex: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex
I find it comforting, but one family member was throughly freaked out/overwhelmed. It was a clear, moonless night and they’d never seen something like it in their entire life.
A good, permanent phobia.
https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd4...
I recently moved from the western US to the east. The public/opens lands are what I miss the most. I don't think many people out east even realize what public land is, how much there is, and how great it is. But this map really displays it.
Side note: What's up with Alberta? Same with northwestern North Dakota? I'm guess this is mining and/or oil operations?
there sure aren't many people there.
are they just burning oil or natural gas straight off the well?
You can have that as desktop background, with dynamically moving night/day terminator, and optionally real clouds and storm systems overimposed, btw :-)
With programs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xplanet , but others too.
It’s Bortle 4 where I live and it drops down to 3 just 20 minutes down the road. One of the best perks of living here.
Time is ripe to invest in a good telescope, I think :)
The 130p gives approximately 3.5x the light your eye normally sees and it’s quite portable. It has been a great intro to astronomy for me.
In fact it’s probably the single best thing about where I live and it’s an extremely rare privilege to have in North America.
I really need to take advantage of it and get a good camera/telescope.
so it all comes down to realistic expectation levels what can be seen. you don't want to spend the money and then be disappointed and get turned off to the experience as underwhelming.
one thing to remember when buying gear is to only go as big as you can carry/assemble by yourself. getting something that requires 2 people to lift/carry means you can't use it unless you can convince someone to go along with you, we let's face it, it's definitely a hobby that leans towards the soloist. for someone like you that can do it from home without having to travel every. single. time. might be a bit less of an issue. just general advice for others that might come along
the only regret i have in buying my gear is that i'm at least 4 hours to a class 2 site, and i no longer have a car of any type let alone one that fits all of my gear plus camping equipment.
This was depressing...I live in central Germany and 4 is the best I can get.
Holland looks terrible. I guess it's because of the lack of hills/mountains.
(I don't think I need to attribute this to this readership, but in case I do, it's by Emerson. And if you didn't know that, I strongly recommend googling Nightfall.)
https://eu.sj-r.com/story/news/2010/11/24/looking-up-stars-o...
But Asimov did write the short story inspired by the quote.
although great for seeing the sky, what happens on the African continent in terms of development is crazy and sad.
I grew up in Florida and was many times 100 miles off shore at night. I was never astounded by the night sky until I drove through the middle-of-nowhere in Oregon as an adult.
I'd tell you to come up to norther Marin-- the prohibition on billboards here makes the night sky much darker than over the rest of the bay area. But it's gotten a lot brighter in just the last couple years--- the transition to LED outdoor lighting seems to be doing a tremendous harm.
Two years ago the milky way was naked eye visible at my home on good nights. It doesn't appear to be anymore.
You can still see the orion nebula and its blue h-beta glow with just some binoculars though.
Looking at the map, it was class 1 (artif brightness 0.067)
and here is where they get there dataset: https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/contact/showshort.php?id...
Thank you btw. Informative post.
Obvious caveat: bring light with you, enough to comfortably see at least 10m ahead when you're walking.
Just as many of us are not used to dark skies anymore, we also seriously underestimate how dark it is in places with no habitations/street light and the moon is not out. I sometimes found myself in forests with almost no visibility if I cut my torchlight.
but for bog's sake get a red filter so you don't screw up your night vision!
Just checked I'm also a couple of hours away from 2-3 places. Canada is really vast with forests, lakes and tundras where no one lives in.
The good part? You can see ALL the Milky Way for a couple nights.
Unfortunately I live in a class 8-9 (5190µcd/m2) location right now, but recently I have been to a class 2 (6.41µcd/m2) location and in moonless nights the sky was indeed fantastic and incredibly immersive.
I have plans to move to the latter country in a few years time (for many reasons, but low population density and a lot of breathtaking nature/wilderness being among the top reasons).
Definitely something I was not acutely aware of before, and I hugely enjoyed being able to look up and see them again.
My wife grew up in an 8/9. We drove out west onetime and she had never seen the stars so visible. I can’t imagine growing up not seeing stars, but my children are about to do just that.
So why do I? It is not just to see more from my telescope. It is because this is part of a very broad problem. The problem? That humans on this planet have not even considered how we can live in a state of stasis with this planet. Weather catastrophes, insect decline, crop failures to pollination problems, shortages of seafood: these are all symptoms of the root problem, and light pollution is just one more symptom.
You'd need to convince the governments to do something about it, but that's a large task given there's a lack of money for lobbying and a lack of profits to encourage them to do anything about it.
Maybe they're just prioritizing where they spend their energy. And maybe they're right.
Of course, global warming can also cause civilization to collapse.
You people care so much about light pollution, the environment and the future of humanity so much. Oh how grand and amazing of a person you must be.
Have you considered that many if not most humans endure enough suffering to not give a shit about humanity being destroyed you along with it? You care so much about the planet but the planet will be fine, it is humanity that is screwed.
So why should individuals that live their entire lives in suffering because of the very conditions humanity as a collective has encouraged and enacted give a shit about humanity?
You all know what is right like everyone else and you made your choice on what to be concerned about. So enjoy the fruits of your labour like everyone else!
Because if they don't, they're descendents will suffer even more.
I mean, really what you're asking is "why should people care about others?", which feels like a whole branch of philosophy.
Many have been misled and deceived and densensitized and cheated and de-liberated. Yet they will still help each other, and even complete strangers, with nothing visible to gain. Giving a shit makes a difference. That's how I really feel.
There is some suffering in the world right now. And it’s bad in places, there is no question. I don’t know exactly what suffering you’re thinking of or referring to, but if it were true that most people didn’t care at all about humanity being destroyed, then most people wouldn’t even be alive. The thing about humans is that we’re hard-wired to want to live, and because of that we have hope even when suffering is high.
One thing to perhaps consider is that those of us lucky enough to not live in suffering have the opportunity to help others and to reduce suffering. It is going to take some people caring about humanity, and caring about the planet, in order to improve on the very situation you’re talking about. Parent was pretty clear we’re talking about a symptom of a larger problem, and I guess if we were all face to face philosophizing over beers, you might even agree they were talking in large part about the same problem you’re talking about - us not taking care of each other. If nobody cared about this, then how is it going to get any better?? What can you and I do to make it better?
BTW, are you saying you don’t believe that deforestation, rising temperatures, and extreme weather caused by climate change is having any effect on human suffering? You seem to be making some unstated assumptions when you suggest that caring about the planet isn’t “real”.
You also seem to assume that we can’t work on more than one problem at a time. To me it seems like there are enough people that we might have the ability to address environmental issues in parallel with social, financial, and political issues. Does everyone need to care about the planet? Maybe not. So what’s wrong with some people working to reduce global warming while others work to, say, end the war in Ukraine, or reduce poverty in China, or end death by hunger or Malaria in Africa?
Again, missing the point. You are thinking in ideals and big pictures, missing the forest for the trees.
> BTW, are you saying you don’t believe that deforestation, rising temperatures, and extreme weather caused by climate change is having any effect on human suffering? You seem to be making some unstated assumptions when you suggest that caring about the planet isn’t “real”.
Now how could you have possible come to that conclusion based on anything I said. Let me use this to try and explain again: Do you want someone in rural arkansas to give a shit about global warming? Then find a way to help them get out of poverty. Do you want amazon tribal people getting evicted for deforestation to care about ukraine? Help them fight to keep their land and forest. Yoh want a black person in inner city LA to care about ukraine? You specifically must show them how you are helping fight homelessness and police brutality, Your big picture pleas for people to give a shit fall on deaf or apathetic ears because you are not addressing specific individual or group needs.
> You also seem to assume that we can’t work on more than one problem at a time.
Actually, I am saying the opposite of that. Most people do want things for everyone as a whole to improve. That isn't the same as giving a shit, as in voting, donating and acting to improve others' situation. That's why global warming isn't front and center in politics in most places that aren't wealthy. You see people like Greta portesting climate change, from nice northern european countries or wealthy counties in the US. If you want change, other people have to actively care.
Look at global warming again, yeah, it would be nice if that didn't happen. Personally, I don't even bother to vote because I have no problems that will solve. It's not that I don't care about global warming but that much more immediate and bigger things are not getting attention so I am not gonna give a shit because I have my own plate full on too of which I see a myriad of more immediate problems like chold sex slavery and human abuse right here in major US cities rampant, rape kits going back decades backlogged, deeply corrupt police I mean I fear going outdoors in the event I interact with a police officer and have my life ruined, and you have our country (US) headed for a civil so there is always that and much more. So yeah, I already survive major natural disasters and pandemics fine, being alive 10-20 years from now is a crazy idea for me, I hope you all make it ok but global warming then is more of a concern than an asteriod hitting earth or the sun dying in 20 million years nowhere near a million other things.
The solution from you: actually adjust your priority to give a shit about more immediate and impactful things for others near you, whoever they might be and since you are doing something for them they will care.
For me, my problems are my own I don't ask help from anyone but as far as others go: bring back cruel and public punishments for indisputably proven child abusers andn traffickers, let the goal of punishment be prevention where the very tought of the crime becomes unimaginable. No more hiding behind "it's not humane", these people chose to forfeit their humanity and humane treatment. Can't stomach that, then as much as it is one of my top things I care about let us all give up our privacy and have our digital and physical lives constantly monitored to prevent this. This must end now, at all costs. There is nothing more important that protecting the most innocent membersof society. A society that draws a line at preventing their abuse, especially at such a large scale deserves to be destroyed. Tell me you will help with that and I will do anything I can to help you with whatever priority you think is higher.
I hope I am explaining myself better. For a long time I used to arrogantly think that my problems were special. That even the very idea of a...
cf. https://chaos.social/@phoenix/109630800743333177
I'd like to reduce sky glow. I use motion sensitive downward lighting and close my blinds. I'd imagine that and redesigned street lights could cut sky glow in half or better.
But there's not enough money involved to even create regulations/standards in building codes or for lighting manufacturers.