Hacker News Reader

Comment by todfox | Hacker News Reader

This is one issue that breaks my heart more than almost any other. I never saw a truly dark sky or the milky way until I was in my early 30s. Now I take regular road trips out west to experience it.

People are so oblivious to light pollution. They don't realize how absurdly bright our lights are and how little they're actually needed. At minimum, they shouldn't be lighting the undersides of airplanes.

I didn't know what else I could do about this, so I inserted a light pollution level in my indie game. You have to replace these hideously bright outdoor lamps with full cutoff fixtures to gradually get the stars back. I wish there was more I could do.

The problem has to be educational. If the public valued the night sky, they would be amenable to fixing it. But how do you accomplish that if you're not any good at marketing or communicating?

View on HN

also "LED" fixtures may not be the answer. The astrophotography community has software to remove both high and low pressure sodium lights' color frequency. LEDs can be in several different frequency bands, and makes them harder or impossible to remove, even if there is less overall "light pollution" from them.

I live in a purple area (one step brighter than black - none or close to none) on the pollution maps and even so, when a nearby city switched to LEDs for the "main drag" it made the city lights really apparent even further out than before, about 7 miles further out, due to the high humidity and other local effects.

However i do think that something needs to be done, i lived in a suburb of Los Angeles growing up (quite far though) and i remember being able to see the milky way during the summer when i was allowed to stay up later than usual or play outside later than usual. In my teens and early 20s though, we had to drive to angeles national forest mountain roads to be able to see the milky way.

> At minimum, they shouldn't be lighting the undersides of airplanes.

What if another airplane has to suddenly climb at night?

There's much less air traffic at night, and what traffic there is, is probably on an IFR flight plan.

But lighting would only really help VFR pilots if it was coming from above and they were looking down. Looking out and up from a small airplane cockpit to avoid traffic is really impractical. You're better off relying on ADS-B.

I feel like the damage done by the underside lights on airplanes is minimal at best, especially since planes, you know, move out of the way relatively quickly. The damage done by removing them can be tremendous.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. I was referring to the illumination of aircraft by lights on Earth, not lights on the aircraft itself. The light coming from Earth is wasted.

Google TCAS.

This isn't really an answer to your question, but I feel like a big part of the problem is that people don't know what they're missing. Even though I've tried to find dark places to see the stars, I have never in my life seen the night sky without light pollution. I've thought about it a lot and there probably isn't the political will to start something like this, but I think there should be, on the last new moon in August (any day would work, but it has to be the dark and clear), a national night sky holiday, where everyone turns off the lights for an hour after midnight, so we can all get a chance to really see the stars. (Turning off the the power for an hour would be even better, but that might cause problems with the power grid.)

I spent several weeks in NW Australia, in desert areas. At this time it was considered one of the darkest places on Earth.

I can honestly say the stars were the most incredible thing imaginable. I slept in a swag, under the stars for many weeks. I’d wake up sometimes at about 2am for an hour or so as I’d go to bed so early because we had very little artificial lighting.

One particular night I remember the whole sky looked purple and white with stars, I could see so many objects moving, satellites and who knows what else, the sky looked alive.

I remember thinning how lucky I was to see it, I also remember thinking “why would anyone watch TV if they could see this instead ?”.

It really put things in perspective for me and made me realise the earth is an incredible spaceship, maybe the best one we will ever have!

Australia used to have this thing called “earth hour” where they encouraged you to turn off your lights for an hour. Not sure if it was officially scrapped or if no one cared anymore after lights become extremely efficient.

That's a great idea. It wouldn't impose a cost or a require permanent change to anyone's property. If people could only see what they're missing!

I might soon be forced to move closer to an urban area. One of the things I’ll miss most is being able to see the Milky Way on every clear night. Gazing across thousands of light years at the neighboring arm of our galaxy will never cease to amaze me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com