It’s night, it’s dark, and the moon is out. You walk out onto the balcony, or the street, or even the local park, look up and there’s nothing. Perhaps Venus’ bright dot, and a few other prominent celestial lights, but beyond that a dark, grey velvet hangs above you.
Maybe you’ve been in the countryside once, or maybe you’ve never left the city, but you’ve seen plenty of programmes, and pictures and books to know something isn’t right. That a veil lies between you and the sky because the millions of sparkly dots we call stars are missing.
A sad existence under a starless sky, making you question where did the nightlights go? Why can’t we see them hanging above the tall buildings of our cities?
Star visibility depends on weather conditions, air humidity and geographical location, with more stars visible in dry deserts and less in warm, wet equatorial tropics.
But the biggest impediment is pollution. Not car exhausts and smog, not too much anyway, but light pollution.
Modern metropolises are lit with blinding lights. You can’t find a single street or building, not one you’d like to wander into anyway, that isn’t illuminated 24/7. Windows, streetlamps, billboards, all project their light into the sky, often needlessly and with great electric costs, obscuring the fainter starlight. But it is the price of civilization. Even if it affects wildlife and takes away our stars.
With all this light on the ground, is it any surprise the sky remains vacant?
So if you wish to stargaze, you may always find a nice cottage in the countryside, far away from the big city, and enjoy a few nights under a starlit sky.
But not all is lost for city dwellers as new policies, technologies and designs are being implemented to combat light pollutions. In many cities streetlamps are redesigned to point downwards and limit the light projected at the sky. They are also fainter, still enough to see, while limiting power consumptions. Additional laws are being passed to limit night light use in big cities. And finally, everyone can make their personal contribution by turning off inessential lighting whenever possible.
And one day, we may yet see the stars and even the milky way again above our cities.
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