To be honest, I quite like this atmosphere. Some roads near my home now feel like something out of a science fiction movie when walked on at night. Of course, traffic safety may not be good, but walking at night adds a sense of fantasy.
US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
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Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#42Tldr “ bright purple light suggests the phosphor layer around the lights has been “delaminated”—peeled off—exposing the blue LED light underneath, Brgoch says. Although blue LED lights are, in principle, deep blue in color”
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#43Read somewhere a few years ago this was a manufacturer defect and they were in the hook for replacing them all. I've (not seriously) considered buying a pellet gun to shoot out the 4 massive neon purple lights at the entrance to my quaint 1970s era neighborhood. They didn't remove the old light poles after installing the new ones about 3 years ago, so it's double lit with sodium vapor and purple now. Curious is there…
Single wavelength light is easier to remove or filter out for astrophotography than broad-spectrum light.
But driver safety is probably way more important than my hobby
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#44It’s a fairly common failure it seems. Here’s it happening in Ireland: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2025/02/05/almost-... I had someone complain to me about how it was a change made by the Green Party for bats: how ridiculous! No, it’s just a faulty light…
I was told it was to make it hard for people using needles to find their vanes. It turns out it's just the phosphor coating coming apart. The LEDs used to energize that to make the broad spectrum light are usually blueish purple for maximum efficiency.
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#45“ producing light that is comparable or better in quality.” They don’t support this claim about led’s, and many groups are concerned about harsh cool light interrupting circadian rhythms. They’re also hideous.
LED fixtures with a high CRI (90+), a proper lumen package, and color temperature are indistinguishable from incandescent lights. Unfortunately, most pole lights are 70CRI, too bright, and the light is too white (4000K+).
The wavelengths are spiky compared to incandescent, and the LEDs flicker if they are not DC-driven.
The flicker is pretty annoying because the transition is an abrupt on-off. Where I am the city had the bright idea to wrap LED ribbons around the poles in the downtown area to make it look more interesting. They connected the ribbons without diffusers directly to the power source of the streetlight. So what has happened now is that as you drive or walk you are looking directly at an unshielded flickering LED.
I still continue to install incandescent bulbs. They look better, and as I live in a cold-weather country the heat they generate is welcomed.
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#46“ producing light that is comparable or better in quality.” They don’t support this claim about led’s, and many groups are concerned about harsh cool light interrupting circadian rhythms. They’re also hideous.
LED headlights are much bigger problem. Way too bright, way too blue.
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#47It’s a fairly common failure it seems. Here’s it happening in Ireland: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2025/02/05/almost-... I had someone complain to me about how it was a change made by the Green Party for bats: how ridiculous! No, it’s just a faulty light…
I was told it was to make it hard for people using needles to find their vanes. It turns out it's just the phosphor coating coming apart. The LEDs used to energize that to make the broad spectrum light are usually blueish purple for maximum efficiency.
It does do that and it's used for that.
I first experienced that in a bathroom in England. Door open, regular white light. Lock the door, blue light. I thought I broke something when that happened.
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#48Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sodium lights aren’t even orange in the normal sense of the word. They only emit one wavelength.
What is the normal sense of the word? I only know the CIE standard observer to define colour and with this it is clearly in the equivalence class of orange.
I think they mean they don't emit a "natural" orange (like an orange flower) that is really some kind of sum of many wavelengths. I could be wrong though.
Re: US Streetlights Are Turning Purple
#50I've never seen a LED streetlight turn people where I live. Sounds like bad light design and the LED is perhaps getting too hot.
Though that said, just go and replace them as they would have had to for sodium vapour lamps they had before? And this time replace them with something that runs them at a lower temperature, especially if the environment during a summer could be hot from external temperature.