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mckitterick Mar. 25th, 2008 11:33 am)
mckitterick Mar. 25th, 2008 11:33 am)The sixth annual National Dark-Sky Week is March 29 - April 4. The event puts the spotlight on light pollution. Here's what light pollution looks like from space:
A close-up of the United States:
Click the image to see the story.
Look at that: There's not much dark sky out there. Imagine how black the ancient skies must have looked. Imagine all the stars that our distant ancestors could see.
The World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour kicks off this event on March 29th from 8:00-9:00pm: Turn off your lights!
Dark skies.
Chris
A close-up of the United States:
Click the image to see the story.
Look at that: There's not much dark sky out there. Imagine how black the ancient skies must have looked. Imagine all the stars that our distant ancestors could see.
The World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour kicks off this event on March 29th from 8:00-9:00pm: Turn off your lights!
Dark skies.
Chris
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But compared to Western Minnesota where I spent a lot of my growing-up, where I could haul a telescope less than a mile from where I lived and find skies so dark that I could barely see my white telescope tube... it's still far too bright.
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When we moved back to Columbia, MO, our house at the edge of town was pretty dark. Then about a year after we'd been living there, they stuck street lights all up and down the block, including one right in front of our house.
My father went to war with the city about that one.
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- Cities around the world will join together in literally turning off the lights for one hour to offer leadership and symbolize their commitment to finding climate change solutions.
- Lights will be turned off at iconic buildings and national landmarks from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
- Local businesses and restaurants will also be asked to turn off their lights.
- People at home can take advantage of the hour by replacing their standard light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
Hopefully the people at home will switch out the light bulbs before the event. Although I suppose they could always work by candle light. I'm just picturing some poor, well-meaning schmoe stumbling around in the dark, trying to screw in new bulbs all over his house.
8:00 p.m. on a Saturday night? I wonder how many restaurants will participate...
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If only we could get all these excess peoples to huddle together a little more, or better yet, live in arcologies...
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Now the city is going to widen a road near us and put up lights all along. I'm fighting with them about it, but they don't care. I think they're going to use lighting that doesn't scatter horizontally, but we'll see. It's really bad around town in the summer at the parks with baseball diamonds. They use ten times as much light than they need--bluish white light at that--and it scatters horribly. When I mentioned light pollution to the city person I was dealing with he almost laughed.
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I remember the first time I saw the night sky in Nevada, way out in BFE, Nevada, and I'd never seen so many stars at one time.
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Eeep!
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I think we should all live in underground arcologies and give the planet back to itself, ideally, but, yeah, there's lots of more practical solutions out there, god forbid.