Orion Constellation by davedehetre

Looking around the internet today, I’m amazed to see how many people and websites are in their own way protesting SOPA and PIPA. What is most fascinating to me is the reaction people have as the sites they count on day to day blink out. Should SOPA or PIPA actually get passed, we run the risk of having the internet we know and love slowly wink out one site at a time. It would start with a blogger here, a video mashup artist there, starting with the faint voices shining among all the URLS, and as they winked out, folks wouldn’t notice, and by the time the big boys – the Wikipedias and the Reddits – started to get turned off, we’d all be numb to what was going, and just let them wink out as the internet went dark. It’s only because of this sudden, out of no where, loose of these sites that we are woken up to what’s going on.

It is easy to not notice what you are losing if it is a slow and gradual process.

This is true in lots of different venues. For instance, if it’s nighttime, go outside and look up. I’ll still be here.

Back?

So what did you see? This time of year the constellation Orion should be hanging on the Southern horizon for Northern hemisphere readers and on the Northern horizon for Southern hemisphere readers. In a nice dark location, you should be able to make out Orion’s head and belt, and all the fabulous nebulosity that makes up M42, the Orion nebulae, within Orion’s sword.

But if you live where I live, you can’t see anything but the brightest stars unless you go get binoculars. And if you live in a city like Boston, where I used to live, Orion is just 7 stars I know are hiding something amazing I just can’t see.

Many of you are finding your own way to make the internet go a little bit blacker today as you do your own small bit to protest SOPA and PIPA. As you make the internet go black, I’d ask you to also help make the night sky go black.

Right now the Globe at Night project is running a global campaign to try and document the effects of light pollution far and near. They are asking you, your kids, your friends, your colleagues, and everyone in the world, to go outside (wait for it, there are more instructions), and look at the constellation Orion and document how what you (and they) see compares to a series of comparison charts. You can download apps for your iOS device to help, and there are finding charts and more on their website.

Today, the increase in suburban sprawl and the proliferation of cheap LED lighting are combining to erase the stars. We don’t notice from day to day unless we’re careful observers. I’ve seen this once –  in the 6 years I lived in Austin, TX as a grad student, I watched the Ring Nebula disappear from easy binocular viewing to nothing as the city glow grew. I know that we’re losing stars here in Edwardsville because I know we’re building malls, and gas stations, and stores, and parking lots, and on cloudy nights the sky reflects orange. It’s hard to watch.

But with data – with your help collecting data for Globe at Night – hopefully we can go to legislatures and go to lighting companies, and go to the people and say, with facts, “We’re losing the stars,” and inspire change. The city of Tucson, Arizona has protected the skies of the nearby Kitt Peak through ordinances. Other cities, but not enough cities, have shown we can create change. We need to keep moving forward, keep passing dark sky initiatives, and keep finding ways to turn the stars back on by making the night once again light pollution free.

Go dark to Protest SOPA & PIPA, and go outside to checkout the darkness, and report what you see to Globe at Night.

White light, by definition, is a combination of all the different colors of the spectrum. White LEDs, aren’t a perfectly flat distribution of energy as a function of color. They have a very distinct peak in the blue. It’s this peak that causes problems.

Different colors of light reflect and scatter in different ways. In general, red light can make it though a cloud of fog or dust, while blue light is scattered hither and yon. This is actually how we end up with blue and red nebulae. The red light in red nebula comes directly from background stars and is transmitted through the cloud to our eyes, telescope, or binoculars. Blue nebulae are the result of looking at a cloud of gas that has star light hitting it from the side, top, or bottom. The blue light that was scattered comes out in all directions, and is thus visible indirectly. You can demonstrate this by taking an empty 2 liter, filling it with water and a dash of dried milk powder, and then shinning a low power white flash light through the water from different angles.

Today, our low-pressure sodium light bulbs cast an orange glow on everything, but that orange glow tends not to back scatter too badly. The light passes through dusty air to illuminate parking lots and walk ways, and doesn’t reflect off of typical asphalt walkways with too much enthusiasm. Blue light, with its shorter wavelength and higher energy, won’t be so polite, and will eagerly scatter off of anything and everything: dust, fog, the ground, you, the grass, etc. Scattered light can defeat careful attempts to prevent light pollution that rely on downward facing lights.

When people try and illuminate objects, their goal should be to have the photons travel from the light source to the object where they are reflected only in directions where onlookers may be looking from. In theory, onlookers should not include people in planes or in space. In this perfect ideal situation, night time satellite images would show a darkened planet Earth instead of the current trace of major cities and sprawling suburbs (and the occasional shrimp fleet). Because we like to illuminate parking lots and walkways (and the ground in general), this perfect dream will never happen, but at least the red light is unenthusiastic about going to outer space.

If we replace our current low-pressure sodium lights with white LEDs, we will save energy. Cities and individuals will save time (and money) by not having to replace bulbs as often. As humans, we also psychologically will be happier with the white light. Win. Win. Win. Except for the scattering. And there is another problem – It’s easy to make these things BRIGHT. Car dealerships will be able to afford to have their lots as bright as the noonday sun at midnight. High Schools won’t sweat the costs of lighting up their football fields, and marching bands won’t be restricted to practicing in daylight. Everything can be made bright bright bright for low low costs.

And bright at night is bad. You can find links to papers discussing effects on human health, animals, plants, and nighttime resources like stars on the IDA website.
So, these white light LEDs are leaving me conflicted. They save power, effort, and make things look better at night. But they ruin the night. They steal the stars and have the potential to harm many critters that matter.

I never thought I’d be upset to see a break through in energy saving light sources.

While I was a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin I watched the Ring Nebula (M57) disappear. When I first arrived in 1996, this former stellar atmosphere was clearly visible in binoculars from the roof of the building I worked in (RLM). In 2000 I could no longer see it, but some of my more owl-eyed students could see it faintly contrasting against the background glow of too many city lights. When I graduated in 2002, it was just gone. No pair of 10×50 binoculars was going to find it. According to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce the city grew from 846,227 people in 1990 to 1,452,529 people in 2005. With that growth came lights, and with those lights came star consuming light pollution. As the world population grows and becomes progressively more industrialized, our entire planet is losing its ability to see faint stars and galaxies in the night skies.

In an attempt to raise awareness about this problem and document what is going on, the excellent education team at the GLOBE is getting ready to run their the GLOBE at Night program. Last year, over 18,000 people from 96 countries from all continents except Antarctica participated, documenting how light pollution effects the skies everywhere.
I strongly encourage everyone to participate in this project for one simple reason: So you can compare what you see with an image of what you would see if your skies were perfect.

One of my most eye opening experiences as a young astronomy student came while sitting on a rock at the foot of a glacier in the Northern Caucus Mountains. It was the middle of the night. Our camp fire was down to low embers behind me, and looking away from camp the mountains loomed darkly against a star-bright horizon. As I sat facing the ecliptic, I struggled to find the familiar signs of the zodiac among the million points of light. As I searched for familiar patterns I kept getting distracted by satellites. There was simply too much in the sky and I was lost.

I’ve seen dark skies since then. Observing at McDonald Observatory I learned that in dark locations clouds are blobs of blackness – the great nothing of the Neverending Story – against a starry backdrop. I also learned that a few 100 people who don’t turn off their lights can create a yellow patch on another wise blue-black horizon. The major observatories of the world are each trying to save their skies from encroaching city lights. Recently, Kitt Peak Observatory released a spectacular image of a very faint face on spiral galaxy (IC 342, above right, credit: T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN, and NOAO/AURA/NSF) to showcase just what their telescopes are capable of thanks to progressive city ordinances curbing light pollution. As the nearby city of Tucson has grown, light pollution at Kitt Peak has grown, but very slowly. Today, it appears that additional growth may be possible without degrading Kitt Peak’s skies.

Not all observatories are lucky enough to have nearby cities and townships work so hard to curb pollution. For instance, consider the misfortunes of California’s Mt Wilson Observatory with the great Palomar telescope. Built on the hills outside Los Angeles, this telescope has watched the city grow and the sky light up with the light from several million people. It doesn’t have to be this way. To protect our skies only 4 simple steps are necessary: Don’t use more light than is necessary for a given task, point lights down from above not up from below, shield light so it doesn’t scatter upward, and use low-pressure sodium lamps as much as possible. These 4 steps will save our skies, and also save on electricity (which saves our entire planet).

With the lose of our skies, we aren’t just losing our ability to see stars, we’re also effecting out health and nature. Hatchling sea turtles aren’t finding the sea. Rodents that eat by the cover of darkness are more easily eaten. Lots of bad stuff that is outlined effectively on The International Dark Sky Association’s (IDA) resources page.

So, go out and lookup with the GLOBE, and then go in and find out how you can help IDA protect what is left of out skies.