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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

That is a pretty offensive amount of light pollution going on the glimpses of street lights and car headlights in the pictures.

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We need a law where if they want to use those at night, they need to cover them up somehow (has to be retractable, because they'll still want free natural sunlight in the daytime).

That'll never happen though. "It costs too much".

So, they'll steal the night sky from us and give us nothing in return.

If public art is worth investing millions in per city, then what is the value of preserving the view of the night sky?

Why don't we just paint everything grey and all wear grey clothes and eat soylent every meal and have nothing left that's beautiful. We can work in windowless offices to save money on windows. Maybe we can cover up the sunset next.

Bah.

It's less efficient to have all that light leaking to the sky. Makes sense to pass some sort of fee or regulation on massive light pollution like that. It's like methane leaks: it'd probably save some money to fix the problem, but the business deprioritizes it because the biggest cost is an externality which they do not (mostly) bear.

If you think the night sky hasn't been stolen already, then chances are you've just never been to someplace where it hasn't been. After that, it's all a matter of degree.

It would be fairly straight forward to have ordinances that limit light pollution--- do a night time flyover (perhaps via drone), issue citations to any property with more than Y illumination facing up after hour X on more than N days out of M.

But people don't care, perhaps because so many people have never actually seen a dark sky.

> But people don't care

Can confirm:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21277251

As an aside-- My own opinions on this subject changed after experiencing a really dark sky myself. I though I had before, e.g. being on a boat a few miles off Florida at night, but I hadn't-- not only is it not that dark at that distance but the humid air on the ocean reduces visibility.

For the 2017 solar eclipse I drove out to Hereford, Oregon for the best chance of being in the middle of the path with zero cloud cover-- which was a total success. My drive had me going up 395 towards wagontire at something like 3am and I took a break with the lights of the car off long enough to dark-adapt my eyes and see the night sky in some of the darkest skies in the continental US.

I do not exaggerate to say that although the eclipse was really neat, I found the moonless clear night sky considerably more impressive than the eclipse and considerably less well captured by pictures.

In talking about it to others I found that many people didn't know that the milkyway is perfectly visible to the eye, and not in some squinting barely visible sense, but in an awe inspiring "holy crap what is that?" sense... Many seemed to think that it was just some long exposure / multi-spectral trick like you often see in astronomy photos.

I grew up in South Florida where the gulf stream isn't far offshore and where even in the winter the seas are pleasant and perfectly swimable at all times outside of heavy storms. There the ocean remains usually calm and at essentially plausible bathtub temperatures (https://www.surf-forecast.com/sstgraphs/Fort-Lauderdale-14th...), even in the middle of the night every month of the year. When I first traveled to California and encountered the pacific with freezing cold waters and giant crashing waves against cliffs ... suddenly the ocean as it existed in art and literature made much more sense to me.

Experiencing an actually dark sky made the wonder at the night sky in older literature make so much more sense to me in a similar way. ... and an actually dark sky is a lot more accessible than a total eclipse too: You might have to travel a considerable distance to see either, but a clear dark sky is available on many more nights.

https://darksitefinder.com/map/

I share your sentiment. I volunteer for a charity that provides international disaster response. I was in Mozambique earlier this year, in the middle of a disaster zone, no power so no light pollution. Here's a short extract from a piece I wrote about the experience one night. I was sleeping on the concrete roof of the farmhouse that was centre of the aid distribution in the area...

-------------------------------------------

Cold. Wet. It is 0230. We've just been rained on. A light rain but it's cold and the mesh netting of the mosipod offers free passage to soak me inside. The days toll of many litres of water sits heavy within. Arise, down the steps, toilet. Back outside. Up the steps.

I look up.

The sight that greets me will stay with me forever. In the midst of disaster I see the dazzling, aching beauty of the heavens arc across the sky above. Not a single light shines on the land around me. The world is silent and utterly still save for my breath and the faint sense of life from my team mates sleeping around me.

From horizon to horizon the sky is vivid and alive with twinkle and sparkle and depth and clarity. Such light and colour as found only in the imagination is accented with an occasional shooting star. I don't know how long I stood there. I just have to stare at it all. I feel like I can reach up and touch the universe itself it's so clear above me.

I wasn't the only one. Someone else is standing out here to. In the starlight, I don't know who.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" and acknowledgement, is all we can exchange.

Somehow language just doesn't capture it. Words are just a dull tribute to the majesty the sky shared with us that night.

I lie down. Staring up at the scene above now muted by the mosquito mesh. I fall asleep to fireflies dancing above me.

--------------------------------------------

The experience, and others gained in that month I was there, will stay with me forever. There was something primal and ancient about seeing the sky I saw that night. I can truly understand our ancestors predisposition to create gods and tell the stories written in the heavens above them. It was an amazing experience.

If you want dark skies, move to the country. There's tons of trade-offs to living in an urban areas and light pollution is but one of them.

Even 'in the country' there is a considerable amount of light pollution-- and per the subject of this article, there is likely to be more there in the future! :)

City vs country is seeing no stars at all or only a couple vs hundreds, but to see thousands you have to be a long way from any kind of development.

I wonder if this was less true a couple decades ago or more-- say, in the mid-1990s. I remember being out on a rural road in northern Wisconsin (about an hour north of Green Bay) where the driver of the car pulled over and turned off the car & lights so I could see the sky. In my memory, at least, there seemed to be thousands visible, along with the Milky Way.

Light pollution doesn't have to be nearly as bad as it is, we're just cheap and callous people. We could have cities and still be able to see a few more stars than the half dozen you might see now. I wonder how many people have never seen the milky way? It's a great big stripe right across the sky you can see with your bare eyes, if someone could kindly turn off their giant fuckin' BUY NOW sign and point the street lights at the street instead of into the sky.

Kids don't get to choose where they move, I think they should be able to see the stars. Just one of many things we're continuing to ruin.

We subdivide so small that people don't have room to grow a single tree now, and the subdivision stretches out over the horizon. We build cities where trees aren't planted. We cover up the sky and the earth alike.

If you do manage to grow a tree, eventually they'll come tell you its now a hazard, cut it down.

A few years ago there was a heavy snowstorm in Provo Utah, that caused a very local power outage. I was able to continue reading a book using only light pollution bouncing off the clouds.

(The window I was at was facing away from the town the light was coming from)

If there is something offensive in here, it's the use of electricity when there is a free light source around.

Since plants absorb certain wavelengths of light, and LEDs produce certain wavelengths, it can be more efficient to grow plants with solar charged LEDs than with solar directly.

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