Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
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Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#2In my area I've noticed the problem isn't so much that they are brighter, but that our new bulbs just emit light near 180 degrees (sideways) with no control over direction.
It causes light to flood into homes, and more than half isn't even illuminating the road. They also have no diffusion, so its harsh on the eyes. A bad design all around
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#3Requiring them to change the directionality of the light, e.g., ensuring that 100% of it is directed downward at the illumination target, instead of just splashing it everywhere, would be far better.
This 150 Hz flicker may be above the flicker fusion threshold [0] for humans, but not for many animals. Excess lighting hours already massively screw up everything from sleep cycles, feeding patterns, growth patterns migration patterns, etc. in insects, birds, mammals, and plants, and contribute to the human caused mass extinction. Making it flicker would only exacerbate it. Perhaps if the flicker was at a rate in the kHz region, it wouldn't add to the interference.
But the best idea is to either ban lights altogether, or put them all on motion sensors, so both public and private lighting is turned-on only when needed.
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#4Very excited
to see the headline, but the “hack” was highly underwhelming, disappointing, disconcerting.
We need to be reducing light pollution for the benefit of humans and other life forms, not just telescope machines.
The solution is less light, and more targeted, well thought out, aesthetically pleasing use of it. Warmer color temperature, shining it just where and when needed and reevaluating just how much illumination is wise and called for at night.
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#5Right. They're going to get all the streetlights in an entire city to blink in unison. Sure they are.
Anyway, in most cases the LEDs don't run at 100%. In our area a, I happen to know that they are between 29% and 40%. That dimming is accomplished by blinking. Which would conflict with the idea of having them blink synchronously.
Much simpler solution: ensure the LEDs ghts are directed exclusively downward, and have only as much illumination as needed.
Even better: turn the darned things off when they are not needed - why illuminate empty streets?
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#6Article has a lot of fluff and ads. Tldr; synchronize flipping the street light on and off, and opening and closing a shutter in the telescope.
So only works for astrophotography, will increase exposure times, not likely to catch on since it only works for astrophotography. Unless entire cities, including parking lots, adopt them, it will only help with direct stray light, which isn't that much help.
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#7Great idea and demo but tough to see many municipalities refitting their street lighting to keep astronomers happy. Might be easier to persuade them to just turn streetlights off completely for a few hours a night, at least then there’s some cost saving.
Maybe in the future when we all have smart glasses with night vision mode and self driving cars we’ll look back at citywide streetlights as a quaint and inefficient solution
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#8Right. They're going to get all the streetlights in an entire city to blink in unison. Sure they are. Anyway, in most cases the LEDs don't run at 100%. In our area a, I happen to know that they are between 29% and 40%. That dimming is accomplished by blinking. Which would conflict with the idea of having them blink synchronously. Much simpler solution: ensure the LEDs ghts are directed exclusively downward, and have…
> Even better: turn the darned things off when they are not needed - why illuminate empty streets?
That is a way better idea than the one in the article, for sure. So many benefits. Would need the motion sensing technology to be top notch tho. Need to illuminate for pedestrians as well. Or perhaps illuminated sidewalks, or smaller lights for pedestrians.
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#9Ah, the good old "human eye can't see N Hz" that will make night lights insufferable for those who happen to see it. My grandma has a couple of lightbulbs in her apartment that annoy nobody except me. I feel like laser-blinded when they are on, no matter where I look. It's blindingly bright and visually dark. Idk if it's flicker frequency or light spectrum tbh, but it's that same "hey you shouldn't see it, cause nobody can" attitude. I also shouldn't see quick static-y shimmering on any lcd panel, because their backlight frequency is in a range that my eye couldn't even register.
Re: Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution
#10Right. They're going to get all the streetlights in an entire city to blink in unison. Sure they are. Anyway, in most cases the LEDs don't run at 100%. In our area a, I happen to know that they are between 29% and 40%. That dimming is accomplished by blinking. Which would conflict with the idea of having them blink synchronously. Much simpler solution: ensure the LEDs ghts are directed exclusively downward, and have…
I'm not sure I'd be so quick to dismiss the feasability, at least not based on your reasoning so far.
FM Radio stations have managed to accomplish getting the speaker in your car radio to "blink synchronously" according to a complex signal pattern in the exact same way as millions of other radios simultaneously.... for about a century now. As long as all streetlights are in locations with good radio reception (which, since they're all on streets and are tall, is likely), it would not be that hard to implement in principle a central FM or other radio signal that oscillates according to the expected blinking. Lights that are engaging in dimming could multiply another signal by the central signal to diminish it even more.