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World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

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Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#41

Post by phinnaeus »

modeless wrote: post #28
culi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just about getting rid of the last place on earth you can sometimes get a truly dark sky. This is about progress itself > Since its inauguration in 1999, Paranal Observatory, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has led to significant astronomy breakthroughs, such as the first image of an exoplanet and confirming the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The Nobel Prize in Physic…

It's not literally the last place on Earth with dark skies. It's just one place with dark skies where they built a telescope. This isn't about protecting the sky and it's not about "progress", it's about protecting an investment of money in a telescope. The price of launching giant telescopes to space is set to plummet in the next few years with Starship and New Glenn coming online. IMO we should be focusing on that…

Launching telescopes is not a viable alternative to ground based telescopes. They are completely different scales. We would need large scale orbital construction facilities or a space elevator to bridge that gap. We don’t need to develop every square inch of the planet to support humanity, we don’t take up that much space.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#42

Post by WorkerBee28474 »

aragilar wrote: post #38
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would it be unthinkable to just NOT have bright lights pointed at the sky all night? That's possible, and directed/shielded lighting is commercially available. However, the project's critics have already said that no plan the project comes up with will be good enough - “Even if [AES] do a perfect job, using perfect lights that probably don’t even exist and perfect shielding, there will be an impact and that will be…

The plan of "don't build a major industrial centre 5km from the best site for optical astronomy in the world, build it somewhere else" seems like a perfect viable one to me.

So that would be Mauna Kea. I don't believe there is any industry being built near there.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#43

Post by aragilar »

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #42
aragilar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan of "don't build a major industrial centre 5km from the best site for optical astronomy in the world, build it somewhere else" seems like a perfect viable one to me.

So that would be Mauna Kea. I don't believe there is any industry being built near there.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I though Paranal beat Mauna Kea (and some basic google searches aren't throwing up anything that makes me question it, e.g. https://www.eso.org/gen-fac/pubs/astclim/espas/espas_reports..., though that's from more than 20 years ago, so site quality has likely changed since then). There's also the issue of northern vs. southern sky.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#44

Post by aragilar »

8bitsrule wrote: post #39

Not sure this would be affected: The Vera Rubin scope, which cost $600+ million, will see first light this July. It's capable of creating a map of the entire available sky every few days. Containing 40B objects, several times more than all previous sky surveys combined. Half of those images are already threatened by constellations of comm satellites. Another concern is spy satellite imaging. https://archive.is/RzCNI#…

No, the Vera Rubin Observatory is on Cerro Pachón (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory) rather than Cerro Paranal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Telescope), the maps on the right hand side show the difference (~6° latitude). Similarly I wouldn't expect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Silla_Observatory to be affected, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope would be I expect (noting that I haven't seen anything beyond the ESO press release).

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#45

Post by kristjansson »

returningfory2 wrote: post #18
ok_dad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a port and industrial plant that requires 3/4 of a gigawatt of electricity will be built within a limit of less than 4000m from the ocean port? Every port I’ve seen took at least a few kilometers of inland space. I also don’t think a few kilometers makes much of a difference to the light reduction, basically any light at all will harm the telescope. I am surprised at the “meh” response from the commenters h…

The problem is that, remarkably, there’s always a reason not to build. A different site in Chile will probably have some obscure species of beetle, or rocks that someone has interpreted as an Indigenous site, or some minor highway that can’t handle the traffic, etc etc etc, so that we can’t build there either.

The world is trade offs. Some are worse than others

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#46

Post by oefrha »

aragilar wrote: post #38
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would it be unthinkable to just NOT have bright lights pointed at the sky all night? That's possible, and directed/shielded lighting is commercially available. However, the project's critics have already said that no plan the project comes up with will be good enough - “Even if [AES] do a perfect job, using perfect lights that probably don’t even exist and perfect shielding, there will be an impact and that will be…

The plan of "don't build a major industrial centre 5km from the best site for optical astronomy in the world, build it somewhere else" seems like a perfect viable one to me.

Well, local people probably care about economic development and don’t give a rat’s ass about astronomy. So the question becomes, who’s going to compensate for the loss of economic development? (By local I don’t mean strictly local, in case of counter arguments along the line that there are no/very few local people to begin with.)

Disclosure: I’m a former physicist and I have personally operated an optical telescope with a 15’ dome, as well as a 60’ radio telescope, which probably puts me among 0.01% of world’s population. So I do know a thing or two and care about astronomy.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#47

Post by rad_gruchalski »

kortilla wrote: post #29

Headline is dramatic but misleading. Essentially the entire 7/10 of the planet in the ocean has skies as dark as this. Clarity significantly reduces the footprint, but there are massive chunks of mountain ranges untouched by human development in both hemispheres that would be just as clear as here. If clear skies are important enough to block a new development, they should just unlock some land in the Himalayas or Ro…

Who’s “they”.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#48

Post by bongodongobob »

seattle_spring wrote: post #35
hackingonempty wrote: post #2

If you were wondering if there was any issue even less important to Americans than the lives of pedestrians and cyclists, it is dark skies.

Which is too bad, because it takes a special kind of heartless, empathy-lacking ghoul to disregard such things that make life on this Earth worth living to so many people.

Pretty fucked up to say that people that don't have dark skies even on their radar with everything going on right now are heartless and lacking empathy. It shows a gross misunderstanding of the average person today and really shows your lack of empathy.

I shoot astro, I love it. I wish skies were darker. But I certainly don't blame my comrades for not giving two fucks about how the sky looks when they are asleep after working two jobs to pay rent.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#50

Post by otteromkram »

hackingonempty wrote: post #2

If you were wondering if there was any issue even less important to Americans than the lives of pedestrians and cyclists, it is dark skies.

I would say quiet.

Every place I've moves to in recent years looks nice, but you can't enjoy it because passenger cars and trucks have gotten louder without restraint or consequence. This doesn't mean right next to a major freeway, either; half-a-mile (about a kilometer) or more away from most 4-lane roads isn't far enough.

For an example, look up how many tickets in any given city have been issued for an improperly maintained exhaust system.

Police only care about speeding tickets. So much so, that even if a noisy "sports" car is pulled over for speeding, they won't be issued a noise citation in concert.

Why? ACAB.

Cops probably drive around in noisy cars/trucks after work (and some jurisdictions have police cruisers with a throaty exhaust because of course they do), so ticketing those violations isn't in their own best interest.

Anyway, noise is way more of an IDGAF issue for any city in the US.

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