I would 100% rather have a truly bright and lively city at night than a visible night sky.
More than half the year is in the winter ffs!
LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
51–60 of 200 posts
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#52I've started doing this in my home. All lights are smart LEDs. At 8pm, they shift warm, 80%. From 9pm-10pm, they go from 80% to 0%. At 7am, they start going from 0% to 100% cool (I work from home and it helps with focus). Having my environment reflect the patterns of nature has really been a nice change.
I do something similar with my exterior lights - at sunset my lights come on at ~1% at 2000K. If they detect motion (in my driveway or back deck) they go up to 100% at 2700K. At sunrise they turn off.
Note that bulbs exist that automatically warm as they dim - so in my case the switches are smart, but the bulbs themselves are all dumb.
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#53Greenhouses here in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been devastating to the night sky. It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. I've taken friends out to thoroughly mediocre skies (Bortle 4-5) and they've been very impressed, because they're used to city lights (Bortle 9) where you can ma…
Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.
This is not only about being able to see a nice night sky (although I admit I love seeing one), it's a very much more fundamental issue.
Light pollution has dramatic negative consequences for wildlife and thereby our ecosystem we so heavily depend upon.
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food. Not an expert, but I would think greenhouse light pollution is not necessary for agriculture? It seems like obvious waste (money spent generating light that isn't going to photosynthesis), but I assume it's cheaper not to shield the lights than to shield them, so it's a matter of ROI and requiring people take care of…
I mean it's not easy to have greenhouse walls that let sunlight in but don't let grow light out. You can direct the light but you are going to have loss.
Yeah, let's not inconvenience companies.
(FYI, it's a solved problem: https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-P...)
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.
This is not only about being able to see a nice night sky (although I admit I love seeing one), it's a very much more fundamental issue. Light pollution has dramatic negative consequences for wildlife and thereby our ecosystem we so heavily depend upon.
Yes it has negative consequences for wildlife, which is why it is FAR BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT to put all the agriculture in one place at high efficiency rather than spread farmland out over otherwise virgin wilderness.
Would you rather have 2x the wilderness 80% degraded or 1x the wilderness 90% degraded? Unless your plan is to decide who starves to death, it's far better to have greenhouses where we already have farms!
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#56Greenhouses here in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been devastating to the night sky. It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. I've taken friends out to thoroughly mediocre skies (Bortle 4-5) and they've been very impressed, because they're used to city lights (Bortle 9) where you can ma…
Putting astronomy on the dark side of the moon would probably work better than putting it into space because you can use some local material for construction.
The far side of the moon would be useful for a radio observatory where one can block the noisy Earth while taking advantage of the ability to construct large collection area dishes (think Arecibo in a crater - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope )
As to the dark side of the moon, I would suggest a read of the story "A Walk in the Sun" - https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671878522/0671878522___1.htm (the dusk terminator moves at about 10 mph (15 kph) at the equator).
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.
I can't just casually hop up to the Yukon for an evening of astronomy. It's about a thirty hour drive. Even relatively small towns have exurbs now because of our terrible city planning, so light pollution extends shockingly far. Alberta's probably the worst, almost the entire province (about the same land area as Texas) has light pollution. > instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west…
What are you on about? Literally drive north a bit towards Whistler, you can get out of the light pollution in an hour or two
lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=8.01&lat=49.6027&lon=-122.7672&state=eyJiYXNlbWFwIjoiTGF5ZXJCaW5nUm9hZCIsIm92ZXJsYXkiOiJzYl8yMDI1Iiwib3ZlcmxheWNvbG9yIjpmYWxzZSwib3ZlcmxheW9wYWNpdHkiOiI2MCIsImZlYXR1cmVzb3BhY2l0eSI6Ijg1In0=
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#58Where I live, we have a small park, 500m away. You need to walk through it if you want to get to the city center from the small neighborhood we live in. To protect the wildlife, the lighting system has presence sensors, so as you walk or bicycle through the park, the way/street lighting turns on, you can walk, and just after you, it turns dark again. Really cool, especially the first time I went through it in the mid…
Those things drive me nuts. There is a walking path that I frequent, and I can't use it at night because they are spaced every 20-30 feet. When I am not under them, they are off and my eyes adjust to the darkness and as I pass under one it flips to full daytime brightness and blinds me. As soon as I walk away from it, everything goes dark again, but my eyes had adjusted to the daytime brightness of the lamps. And I k…
The timing and brightness is well adjusted, it feels natural, like a friendly ghost taking care of you.
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#59Greenhouses here in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been devastating to the night sky. It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. I've taken friends out to thoroughly mediocre skies (Bortle 4-5) and they've been very impressed, because they're used to city lights (Bortle 9) where you can ma…
> other internet providers dumping tens of thousands of satellites in orbit instead of building municipal internet
Ah yes, that municipal internet in the Pacific Ocean. The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. The municipal internet to mountain villages. The municipal internet running to airplanes. The municipal internet to the Antarctic research stations.
Tell me you don’t know the point of satellite internet without telling me.
If you want to make arguments against sat constellations so people can make long exposure photos, go for it. But don’t pretend there are actual viable alternatives to LEO sat internet.
Re: LEDs’ potential to save our night skies
#60I once lived in a city that had replaced street lights that cast light in a circle with modernised ones that cast a sharply delimited rectangle of light on the road, and didn't waste light in other directions. The thing was, the roads of this city were arranged as a footpath, then a grassed area with trees, then the lights, then the roadway. Only after the city had rolled out thousands of these lights did someone not…
Get rid of cars and they'd take down all the lights.