Black Skies, Smiling at Me
Black Skies, Smiling at Me
This week, April 20–26, 2014, is International Dark Sky Week,
a global effort to get people to appreciate the skies above them. Light
pollution—excess light thrown into the sky by street lights, houses,
buildings, and pretty much everything that makes light—reduces our
ability to see the stars, sometimes dramatically. I lived in Chicago for
a year, and on the clearest nights I could only see the very few
brightest stars, struggling against the mighty orange glow of the city
projected upward.
This light is wasted;
it’s money thrown away, it’s low-efficiency, and in many cases the
lights being used at night aren’t really doing a good job of
illuminating the ground and making it safer.
Astrophotographer Mark Gee (who has been featured on my blog before; see Related Posts below) made a short and lovely video to highlight the issue. His work is stunning and well worth your time.
Years ago, my wife and I took a weekend vacation to a campground in
rural Virginia; it was a camp I attended a couple of times as a kid. The
owners were family friends, and one weekend every year they had old
friends over to spend time together and enjoy the gorgeous scenery.
We parked near the main house, and as we fussed inside the car
getting our belongings together, another weekend-goer walked by us while
he talked on his phone. We overhead one snippet of his conversation,
where he said “… and you should see the sky at night here. It’s so dark,
and there are thousands of stars!”
I turned to my wife and we smiled at each other. He had no idea an
astronomer was sitting there and could hear him; that was a spontaneous
exclamation from someone who simply had never seen a dark sky before,
and was properly overwhelmed by it.
That night we all sat in a field and watched the brilliant stars
sparkling in a field of velvety black. It truly was amazing,
mesmerizing, surpassingly beautiful. The artwork of nature, displayed
for all to see …… who have the skies to see it. This experience is what light pollution is stealing from us, and this is why I support what the International Dark Sky Association is doing to raise awareness of it. They have a different theme every day this week
talking about our brightening skies, and I encourage you to take a look
to see what they’re doing about it. The sky belongs to all of us, and
we all deserve a chance to see it.
Related Posts
posted by Pieface @ 8:40 AM
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