The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it | Hacker News Reader

The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it

space.com

53 pointsRetroTechie24 comments

The term is "noctalgia" for those who don't want to feed the clickbait

Thank you.

The point isn't the new term; it is the serious losses caused by the phenomenon, cultural, scientific, and ecological.

"Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is 'noctalgia'"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14685

> Along with our propensity for polluting air and water and the massive amounts of carbon we're dumping into the atmosphere to trigger climate change, we have created another kind of pollution: light pollution.

Ahh yes, light pollution, killing millions annually like air pollution and choking seas and rivers like water pollution. Threatening the existence of nations and making swathes of the world unlivable, like climate change.

Come on, light “pollution” is not remotely equivalent to the others.

"Come on, light “pollution” is not remotely equivalent to the others."

Submitter here. Doesn't make it less relevant. Greenhouse gasses, 'forever' chemicals, other types of chemical/nuclear pollution, raw sewage released into rivers or oceans, microplastics, noise pollution, light pollution, strip mining, slash 'n burn practices, overfishing, etc etc, they all degrade the natural environment one way or another.

What's left is the result of all those effects combined. So even if one type of pollution doesn't seem that bad, it adds to the death-by-1001-papercuts we're dishing out (with "papercuts" being an understatement).

I do think it is kind of crazy when I am out late in the city and still see lots of lights on in office towers everywhere. I refuse to believe that many of them are actually occupied at that time and it seems like a waste of electricity and also damaging to the ability to see stars.

The advent of LED lights being so cheap to keep on I imagine some places just decide to leave them in all night. As for the astronomers my view is they miss the convenience of having a telescope close to their homes and universities whereas the best terrestrial telescopes have been on desert mountains.

These days they can probably log into those remotely.

Personally I think seeing dark skies is important for regular folks too. I was fortunate to grow up in a place where you could easily see the Milky Way at night.

It's truly awe inspiring to lay down at night looking at the stars, and really makes your problems seem insignificant in the grand scale of the universe.

How can you see the Milky Way when we reside in the Milky Way?

Oh I don't just mean for astronomers, I definitely feel like all those lit up towers must be contributing for less visible night sky stars for the rest of us

I feel pretty lucky to be living in Colorado with ample dark sky areas in a short driving distance. Even living in a small city in the Denver metro area - the night sky is significantly clearer with more stars than I used to see as a kid growing up in the “rural” Midwest. Although I’m sure folks who lived in the front range 50 years ago have Noctalgia for even darker skies.

Whenever friends come visit (especially those who are more city-folk and less outdoorsy) I make sure to take a short drive into the mountains so that they can see the milkyway with the naked eye. Never fails to blow their minds. Still blows mine after all these years.

During an overnight power outage several years ago in Provo Utah, I was able to read a book near a window solely via light pollution from Orem Utah reflecting off of snow and low lying clouds. I wrote at the time that we might be able to solve the light pollution problem by showing that increased light pollution corresponds with lowered church attendance due to a decreased sense of wonder. Perhaps we can convince religious fanatics to rally against light pollution with the same sort of fervor that they use against abortion now.

Another casualty of car dependent urban sprawl. It used to be you could travel 10-20 miles and be at a dark site. But now it's all single family homes as far as the eye can see. 100 foot wide roads connect them to big box stores with endless street and parking lot lights that turn the night sky into and orange/white haze.

Again thanks for the clickbait neuter!

Put the term in the headline ffs. Clickbait.

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