When you look at the constellation of Orion from your area, what do you see?
| This? | Or this? |
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Light pollution — unwanted light that goes up into the sky instead of illuminating the ground — has been steadily degrading our view of the sky for decades. Longer. As a civilization, we are less and less tuned to what’s happening in the sky, and it’s my feeling that this is one reason people fall for doomsday scares and astronomy scams on a regular basis.
We need to educate people about light pollution, and this week, there’s something you can do. The GLOBE at Night program wants people (that means you!) to do a very simple thing: go outside, look at Orion, compare the view to some simple sky charts, and make a report on what you see. The whole thing will take maybe ten minutes of your time, and will help map out light pollution across the planet.
The GLOBE folks are doing this all week, from today, February 25, to March 8. This is the time when the Moon will not interfere with observations. If it’s clear where you are, go out and take a look at Orion!
Last year, they had 8500 observations. This blog has three times that many readers. Let’s see if we can front-load this survey!
Better yet, do this with a kid. Let them look at Orion, test their eyesight, see for themselves what their sky is like. If you are a teacher, make it a class project! It may quite literally open their eyes.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I agree. My college is in upstate New York, where the skies are crystal clear at night. We also have a great observatory with the perfect place to host a star party.
But unfortunately, because it’s a college campus, every single square inch of the place has to be lit up like a stadium. It makes any kind of amateur astronomy impossible.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Remember, you can make more than one observation from different locations. I did several dozen last year. I go out on my bike with a GPS system and a voice recorder. I stop every half mile or so, speak my observations into the recorder along with lat and long, and bike on. The next day, I transcribe and enter into the computer.
I live near the edge of Tucson (right where the road narrows from four lanes to two lanes). It’s a great contrast…if I bike one direction, it gets noticeably brighter and the other direction gets darker pretty quick.
Oh, and tell your child’s teacher about it!
February 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
People don’t look up in the daytime, either. I’ve met grown adults who didn’t know what a contrail or a cirrus cloud was. That leads to the “chemtrail” woo woos. Many folks find the chemtrail web sites and go outside and look up. Some are probably noticing contrails for the first time in their lives.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Light pollution isn’t ‘real’ pollution. It’s just a made up concept used by bird watchers and astronomers to get people interested in their lame professions. I’m not saying astronomy is lame. I’m just saying the lack of planet conquering monsters isn’t helping your cause.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:51 am
It’s just a made up concept used by bird watchers and astronomers to get people interested in their lame professions. I’m not saying astronomy is lame.
Well, I’m afraid that’s the way it parses. Admit it. You’re an Ayn Rand antagonist escaped into reality.
*shrug* I’m a highly compensated engineer, so I’m just sayin’
BTW, what do *you* do for a living?
And “over illumination” at night is estimated to waste 2 million barrels of oil a day in wasted energy. Energy audits repeatedly find that 30 to 60 percent of consumption devoted to lighting in completely unnecessary. There is a major *cost* to illuminating the atmosphere.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:54 am
My sky is somewhere in-between and it gradually gets worse. There’s a glare to the N-N-E in winter and the south is extremely bright. Quebec City is a pain.
And Light Pollution is absolutely pollution. Animals are f-ed up by it. Birds sing more and more at night, bump into buildings.
Heck, aren’t hippies bawling that we’re destroying the habitats of poor animals with wood chopping and polluting waters? Well, we’re also plain destroying their brains here!
February 25th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Yeah, it’s a sad fate. I love looking up at the stars, but I live in NYC, so my view of Orion is CLEARLY the first one. But I love NYC too much to move.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Wait, are you implying that civilizations that looked at the sky did *not* fall for apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo?
February 25th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
‘BTW, what do *you* do for a living?’
I’m an Astronomer. I was trying to be clever but it failed.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Five years ago when the land surrounding my house was mostly woods, my view was close to the second picture. Now, with Atlanta’s rapid expansion, it’s somewhere inbetween, leaning towards the first picture. It’s disappointing, as I bought a telescope a few years ago because I could see so many stars from my driveway. Now it stays in the closet.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
This is one case where progress has actually lowered the quality of life for everybody, except perhaps for the car owners, who in turn do their best to lower it further to everybody else.
There are still some small villages in Europe where the public illumination is either very dim or lacking completely. I never had a reason to miss it, when I was visiting such places.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Light pollution is a terrible problem even here in small town Squamish. The best place I found was rural Alberta, in the middle of nowhere, miles from any town. But then I’d get the heebie jeebies thinking I’d be abducted, and no one would believe me if I told them…
BTW, light pollution has been shown to interrupt not only animal slep patterns, but human circadian (?) patterns as well.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I’d say around here there isn’t much to see in the night sky. It has been awhile since I’ve been out on a clear night – I’m in my winter hibernation phase, but I’ll definitely venture out of my cave for this .
February 25th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I live in a suburb on the north side of Minneapolis. On a really good night I can see a couple dozen stars.
The night before last I slept under the stars in a state park an hour or so north of Minneapolis. We saw lots and lots of sky glory before the moon rose and ruined our fun. The sky was crystal clear and temps were way below freezing. It was lovely.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
hale_bopp, I lived in Tucson about twenty years ago. I remember that once I had driven well beyond the foothills surrounding the city and was completely blocked from any city lights, I saw the most brilliant, amazing skies of my entire life. Having very little water vapor in the air plus being in the middle of a desert without habitation for a hundred miles made for heart-stopping sky beauty.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
More like the latter, although upside down. I’m ten miles from downtown Auckland, so I’d expect the light pollution to be worse, but I think the large areas of water (obviously dark) reduce the density of the pollution, or something.
One very still morning last week my wife and I were walking on the beach before sunrise and we saw Venus reflected in the ocean. I hadn’t seen that before.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I can see a lot more stars here at school (I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia and go to school in central Pennsylvania), but still there are times when it is just too bright (especially near the stadium or the student union building) to see much. I did a project for my freshman seminar last semester on light pollution, and it was amazing how much light we just don’t notice. And, the effects that it can have on both humans and animals are astonishing.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Here in Ottawa, I see something between the mag 3 and mag 4 charts with the Mark-I eyeball.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Hmm. It the foothills surrounding Reno, NV, I can see about mag 5.5. to the west, about 4 to the east. A lot more than one would expect, I suppose, but some strategically-placed hills block almost all of the direct glare from the casinos.
I find it amusing that the UNR observatory is right on the main drag through town. Unless you’re looking at the moon, forget it.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
It’s important, for crime-control and accident-prevention reasons, to have plenty of nighttime illumination in cities. However, the skies could still be preserved for astronomy if the lighting were only at a few wavelengths, say one each in the red, blue and green areas. Then the astronomers could just filter those out.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I live about an hour West of Chicago and I always kind of thought that I had a pretty decent sky. But looking at the magnitude pictures, I think I was fooling myself.
I remember going to school in Nebraska and a bunch of us went out to the Behlen Observatory for the annual night out in November…and the sky was so brilliant, I almost felt like I had vertigo. That was the first time I saw Orion through a real telescope, and so saw the nebula for the first time ever.
Why I stayed in Chemistry is beyond me!
February 25th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I have just visited your page, Levenson. Nice collection of straw men, ad hominem attacks -particularly against Dawkins-, and non sequiturs.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Actually regarding crime…there was a study I read (oh, about 5-6 years ago) that suggested crime was lower where there was less light because: 1. burglars need light too, and 2. most people notice a flashlight when it’s darker (I guess that’s a “duh”, huh?).
February 25th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
This is brilliant! I shall be trying to do it myself if the weather clears. Surely there is scope here for a year-round light pollution map of the world, updated constantly? Oh to have the time…
February 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
On your next nighttime airplane flight, look out of your window especially when landing or taking-off. Do you see a pin-point of bright light in the center of a pool of light? You will see them in parking lots and along some roads. Those pinpoints of bright light are lamps in light fixtures. Unless the goal is to light the underside of your airplane, the pin-points are just wasted light.
A good light fixture will direct all light downward so the lamp is not visible from above. If you look carefully, you can see some parking lots with pools of light and no bright pin-points.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
No matter how hard I try, I can’t see the galaxy in Orion’s Belt.
(10 points to whoever gets the reference)
Back on topic,
This is pretty cool, the guys at GLOBE made up with a good project.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy Blog » Help map your light pollution with GLOBE at Night I remember this last year but never managed to get out to do it. I’ll definitely be trying this year to see just how bad my backyard is! (tags: astronomy “light pollution”) [...]
February 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I remember one watershed moment in my young life. I was on a school camp in the foothills of the McPherson Range south of Brisbane, not far from the border between the states of Queensland and New South Wales. One cold July night I looked skyward, looking for something familiar such as the Southern Cross and the Pointers. It took me much longer than usual to pick out the stars of the Cross from all the other stars I could suddenly see. But what was that lightly glowing, cloudy thing I could see in parts of the sky? “Oh my god,” I said to myself, “it’s the Milky Way!”. From my home at Wavell Heights, only 10km north of the Brisbane CBD, the Milky Way was completely invisible… and this was in 1977, when Brisbane was much less populous, cosmopolitan and well-lit than it is today.
Oh, and I saw a satellite go over within seconds of looking up. It may have been Skylab at the time, but it appeared to be heading almost directly north, suggesting a Landsat or surveillance satellite in a polar orbit.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I just was looking at Orion, so I compared it to their charts. Southern NY, about an hour from New York City. I’d say my view of Orion is about magnitude six or six 1/2.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
There are a lot of things that can be done, simply, to reduce light pollution. The light pointed at the sky does nothing for security. There are lights covers that perform a dual purpose of project light downward and preventing some of the leakage to the sky. Billboards are often lit from below – the excess light is projected into the sky. Those could be lit from above pointing down at the signs.
As pointed out, a lot of energy is wasted making the sky at night an ugly haze of colorless light. The number quoted was 2 million barrels a night. At $100 a barrel that’s $200M wasted each night, $6B a month, or $72B a year (well, I rounded to make the math easy…) – that $72B dollars of wasted energy lighting our skies. What was that NASA budget going to be next year?
Having grown up in the rural mid west I know what a dark sky looks like. Now living in a major southern city I miss the dark skies. I used to be able to actually see the Milky-way. On good nights the sky looked a lot like the magnitude 7 slide (though more often the skies were a better match to the mag. 6 slide). Here, I’d put the viewing between mag 3 and mag 4.
JBS
February 25th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Totally cool. I will definitely do this. I grew up on the outskirts of Tucson, and my Dad has a couple telescopes, including one he built himself from scratch. I have a lot of memories of sitting outside with him in the cold looking up at the stars, including the time he dragged me out of bed at three am on a school night to see Halley’s Comet.
The sky there is excellent compared to Ft Lauderdale, where I live now. IIRC there are actually regulations there as to how bright the lights can be, to avoid disturbing the astronomers at Kitt Peak, Tumamoc Hill and probably a few other places I can’t remember.
I also did a lot of camping as a kid. If you get the chance, take a kid (or several) with you, take a hike into the depths of a national park or forest, find a bald hill and sleep under the stars. I did this during a volunteer stint in the Cumberland Gap, and got to explain all the cool stuff over our heads to the other teens.
(I also broke out a mini-scope and used it during college. Gets attention if you set it up on the steps of your dorm, but not much is visible from a brightly lit campus.)
February 25th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Remember also you can participate in “Earth Hour” – during which people are asked to turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour. Its being held on March 29 @ 8:00pm.
See: http://www.earthhour.org
February 25th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
@ Yoshi_3up
It’s from Men In Black, of course!
I have mag 5 skies here north of Charlottesville, but the reporting form isn’t on the website yet!
Rich
February 25th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Here’s a couple of cool bits from the Arizona Statewide Lighting Codes:
—————————–
49-1104. Use of mercury vapor light fixtures
A. No new mercury vapor outdoor light fixtures shall be installed after the effective date of this section. No replacement equipment other than bulbs for mercury vapor lighting fixtures shall be sold in the state after January 1, 1991 and the use of mercury vapor light fixtures is prohibited after January 1, 2011.
—————————–
SECTION 10-08-002-0003 APPROVED MATERIALS AND METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION OR INSTALLATION/OPERATION:
A. Preferred Source – Low-pressure Sodium (LPS) lamps are the preferred illumination source throughout the City; their use is to be encouraged, when not required, for outdoor illumination whenever its use would not be detrimental to the use of the property.
——————————
This last helps the guys & gals at the NOAO take spectra of stars. It limits the color of the light pollution to the pair sodium lines. We’re about to rejigger our light pollution ordinance here in Albemarle County and will try to get Charlottesville on board too.
Rich
February 25th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I just came back in from looking at Orion. My five year old daughter came out with me. So we counted stars. Well, to a point. It turns out she can see more stars than I can. She could see seven stars in Pleides. She told me the nebula in Orion looks red.
Tonight, I’d call the sky limited to Magnitude 3. At least for me. My daughter might have seen better.
The reporting page isn’t open yet, so I can’t quite officially report yet.
JBS
February 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I’ve noticed light pollution some. Growing up next to the arctic circle with few lights anywhere once the street lights went off, the stars were very crisp. Except in the summer, when there was a big sun in it. Meh.
Now I’m in a more light polluted place, but it’s not really what I’d call bad. My only current equipment is my eyeballs, which are low Mpix (too few nerve cells – sucks at night) but I can still see around mag 4 with ease on a clear night if I have time to wait for the eyes to adapt.
The site says it hasn’t started yet, though it’s past 7 here, though it’s fully clouded over anyway so I dunno how much value there’d be in that observation. I’ll try to get out and see and write in though.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
My sky is between 3 and 4 magnitude, sometimes it’s 5 – what to do? At least it beats my old sky in Houston at 2-3. Good project, but it doesn’t seem to be open yet.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Ok, well, good news for me. When I went out a little bit ago, certain parts of the sky were closer to Mag 4 while other parts close by were much worse. Then I noticed the sharp line where the stars were clearer and brighter versus the dim and a little fuzzy – oh ho! Clouds! Turns out there are high thin clouds tonight.
JBS
February 25th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Mag 6.ish right out in the back yard with the street lights and all
Mag 7 with a 5 minute bike ride
small towns in the middle of nowhere do have an advantage for some things
February 25th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Count me in
February 25th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Remember, light polloution isn’t limited to what we see when we look up. I grew up in Stuart, Florida, on the Atlantic coast, and during the Summer months sea turtles would nest on the beaches. During the nesting and gestation/hatching periods, light sources visible from “seaward of the primary dune” (if you can reach the ocean without climbing up a hill of sand, you are seaward of the primary dune) were illegal. The massive growth in the area, coupled with the sycophantic fawning of the local governments over the developers’s lobbies, meant that every condo had a beach access boardwalk with lights all the way to the sand. My friends and I, and I have no compunctions about admitting this, would often take night-walks down the beach with nice pieces of coquina rocks, and not break the bulbs, but sever the electric cords and pull lengths of them out to take home with us.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:22 am
The light pollution here, combining with air pollution, in Hong Kong is just horrible. Most of the time I can’t see more than 10 stars in the sky. But sometimes I can still spot Orion, Big Dipper and the usual bright stars.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Fifteen years ago, while on assignment for an oil field services company, a photographer and I were being driven back to our hotel on the coast, at about 8:30 PM, from an oil rig in western Egypt, about 100 miles south the Mediterranean and not far from the Libyan border.
The driver stopped and asked us to get out, he had something to show us. We piled out expecting to see some ancient ruin–it was Egypt after all–but there was nothing but sand and scrub. We asked what he wanted us to see, and he simply pointed with his finger and said, “look up.”
I have never been so astonished in my life–and I’ve been all over the world and seen many astonishing sights. With no moon, no clouds, maybe five percent humidity, an absolutely flat landscape, and nothing brighter than a kerosene lamp within fifty miles, the sky from horizon to horizon was ALIVE with stars, thousands upon thousands of them.
This was the sky that the ancient Greeks saw as they first tried to make sense of the universe at the dawn of science and this is what we have lost. Even on the best of winter nights I can’t see five percent of the stars I saw there and I live fifty miles north of New York, in a rural town of only 5000.
While we cannot expect to have seeing anything like as good as what I enjoyed that night, at least not in the cloudy, often humid, and densely populated northeastern United States, we can have much better than what we have now and without sacrificing anything else at all. Indeed gaining much else: less imported oil, less pollution of other kinds, fewer power plants, a better environment for nocturnal animals among them.
Adopting nationally the anti-light-pollution ordinances that such towns as Flagstaff, Arizona, have, would be a win-win-win-win-win situation. But politicians would rather just sit around and blame Exxon for selling us the oil we ask to buy.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Good story, John!
The site’s reporting page is working now, so I reported my mag 5 skies observation from last night a few minutes ago.
Rich
February 26th, 2008 at 9:55 am
When I used to live in Baltimore and would be rowing at 5 am, I would often get asked “What constellation is that?” by my fellow rowers. I would reply “Orion” – it was one of the few you could see in the harbor.
I just sent email to the entire community at the boarding school I teach at – we’re about to go on spring break so should be able to get data from all over. I’m going to be jealous of the kids who are going to Tanzania and New Zealand! Certainly going to beat the skies of NJ.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] til til The Bad Astronomer for [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Done. Here in Holland we have chart 2 / 3. We have way too much light pollution. The skies in France at the west coast near Bordeaux are so much better.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[...] (Source: Bad Astronomy Blog) [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Done. Guess I’m not totally at the absolute bottom of the scale-I can see most of the stars that make up Orion, if no background stars.
February 27th, 2008 at 6:08 am
I, too, can see most of the bright stars in Orion, but almost none of the nebulosity…
This shot also shows up the light pollution:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22177653@N03/2137686999/
February 27th, 2008 at 7:41 am
autumn writes:
[[My friends and I, and I have no compunctions about admitting this, would often take night-walks down the beach with nice pieces of coquina rocks, and not break the bulbs, but sever the electric cords and pull lengths of them out to take home with us.]]
So you think vandalism and theft are proper ways to fight development? How do you feel when people steal from you or destroy your property?
February 28th, 2008 at 9:15 am
[...] observation to thousands around the world. Last year about 8,500 people participated in this event. Phil and Emily have already posted on this, but Universe Today is now joining in to help GLOBE have [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 11:10 am
[...] can of beans to Bad Astronomy for being the first place I read about [...]