11/4/2022 0 Comments Brad glover skaven sky fleetAnd many US parks are taking new measures to preserve what remaining dark skies we have. As scientists have piled up evidence of the dangers of too much light pollution - from energy waste to sleep disruption - more cities are finding ways to cut down the glare. That said, there is an optimistic side to this story. "But the problem is that with the expansion of light pollution, these places are becoming more and more remote." The Milky Way rises above the rocky South Tufa outcrops of Mono Lake, California. "Most people are happy not to live in wilderness so long as there’s someplace they can go," Duriscoe says. But even those are being encroached upon by light from nearby cities like Las Vegas. The United States still has a few dark-sky areas - particularly around southeastern Oregon, western Utah, and northern Arizona. "If you lived in Switzerland, you’d have to travel more than 1,000 kilometers," Duriscoe says. That matters, because for those who do want to see the stars in all their glory (or for astronomers trying to use telescopes), it’s harder to find skies unblemished by artificial light. "What’s surprising," he said, "is how far the glow from these lights reaches out into outskirts and unpopulated areas." It’s not just cities - dark-sky refuges are becoming rarer and rarerĭan Duriscoe of the National Park Service, a co-author of the paper, told me he wasn’t surprised by the level of light pollution in cities themselves. "I hope that this atlas will finally open the eyes of people to light pollution," Falchi said in a statement. The research team, led by Fabio Falchi of the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy, used low-light imaging data from NOAA/NASA's Suomi polar-orbiting satellite to create the map, calibrating the data with thousands of ground readings. ( Falchi et al, 2016)Īnd here’s the entire world: ( Falchi et al, 2016) Note that there are very few dark-sky regions anywhere on the continent: Map of Europe’s artificial sky brightness, as a ratio to the natural sky brightness. In the red and white areas, it’s usually impossible to see the Milky Way with the naked eye - in many places, there are often fewer than 100 stars visible. In the yellow areas, the natural sky is lost, drowned out by street lamps and lit-up buildings. In the blue and green areas, stars start fading from the horizon and zenith. In the black areas, the natural night sky is still (mostly) visible. Map of North America’s artificial sky brightness, as a ratio to the natural sky brightness. Here’s their map of artificial sky brightness in North America, represented as a ratio of "natural" nighttime sky brightness. Artificial light from cities has created a permanent "skyglow" at night, obscuring our view of the stars. They estimate that the Milky Way is no longer visible to fully one-third of humanity - including 60 percent of Europeans and 80 percent of Americans. How hard is it? In a new study for Science Advances, an international team of researchers created the most detailed atlas yet of light pollution around the world. It’s becoming harder and harder to pick out our place in the universe. In big cities, we’re lucky to even glimpse the Big Dipper. Most of us living in urban areas can’t see it because of all the light pollution. That shimmering river of stars is, of course, the Milky Way. If cities were to turn off all their lights - all their street lamps, billboards, neon signs, car headlights - a clear night sky would look something like this: The Milky Way, as seen over Dinosaur National Park in Utah.
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