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Light Pollution Map

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Re: Light Pollution Map

#71

Post by lifeisstillgood »

dmrotar wrote: post #56

Resources like this (and as others have mentioned, Dark Site Finder) are very useful for astrophotography, especially for a hobbyist like myself. Many don't realize how relatively close they live to areas with great nighttime viewing conditions. For example, upstate New York has some great viewing locations, so even if you live in NYC it's an easy weekend trip. Here's a shot I took of the Milky Way taken from such a…

I thought that the Northern Hemisphere was basically pointing away from the Galactic Centre, so shots like this were basically only from South America or Australia etc.

Its - brilliant. Well done and thank you

But .. oh man .. the whole of the UK is polluted :-( maybe a few bits of one Scottish Loch are free.

Re: Light Pollution Map

#72

Post by terramex »

wongarsu wrote: post #40
Naac wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the law? What are people legally required to do?

Probably the most noticable change in recent years is the replacement of mercury-vapor streetlights with the yellow-orange sodium-vapor lights, or with orangish LEDs (although some use blueish LEDs that are not that great for light pollution). In terms of actual legal requirements, Bavaria prohibits sky beams/searchlights directed upwards, and the illumination of facades of public buildings between 11pm and morning.

While switching to LEDs can improve naked eye view of night sky, it sometimes negatively impact amateur astrophotography as mercury and especially sodium lamps have narrow emission spectrum and it can be filtered off using optical bandpass filters. LEDs light have much wider spectrum and cannot be filtered off.

Re: Light Pollution Map

#73

Post by dheera »

amoorthy wrote: post #70
dmrotar wrote: post #56

Resources like this (and as others have mentioned, Dark Site Finder) are very useful for astrophotography, especially for a hobbyist like myself. Many don't realize how relatively close they live to areas with great nighttime viewing conditions. For example, upstate New York has some great viewing locations, so even if you live in NYC it's an easy weekend trip. Here's a shot I took of the Milky Way taken from such a…

Wow amazing! I've been itching to show my kids the Milky Way. I myself have only seen it once in New Zealand decades ago. What is the minimum dark sky rating to be able to see it with the naked eye? I live in the Bay Area and I know there is Pigeon Point Lighthouse which is a dark sky spot but I think it's often cloudy. If anyone has better suggestions would be grateful to hear those.

Davenport is a slightly better bet weather-wise than Pigeon Point, as due to the shape of the coastline and prevailing winds the clouds usually get swept past it. But it still gets cloudy from time to time there. Route 1 in general is a toss-up.

If you live in South Bay, the hands-down best place IMO is Pinnacles National Park. It's only 1.5 hours from San Jose, and easily daytrippable.

If you don't want to go that far, try anywhere along the Airline Highway, in the Paicines or Tres Pinos area (just get away from streetlights; for example, Panoche Road is a very, very dark road), Coyote Lake (shoreline is open for stargazing 24 hours; pay with machine at entrance), Henry Coe State Park, or anywhere along Mines Road but at least 15km southeast of Livermore.

Also, if you're going for Milky Way viewing, do make sure you know when and where the Milky Way is visible. The bright part and galactic core are only visible very late at night now, after 11pm or so, in the east direction. In mid-Summer the MW will be in the sky all night. In autumn the MW will be in the southwestern skies early at night and not visible late at night.

At other times, such as in winter, the outer parts of the Milky Way are in the sky, but you need much, much darker skies to make anything of it, and it's hard to see without long exposure photography. The winter side of the galaxy is actually really beautiful if you do a long enough exposure and all the signal processing necessary to get rid of noise.

Re: Light Pollution Map

#74

Post by gregsadetsky »

seszett wrote: post #28
ianbooker wrote: post #2

Every time I am on a motorway in Belgium I wonder why they have such a huge amount of streetlights on highways. Maybe because it doesn't matter anymore in terms of light pollution? :D

There's actually an explanation for this. At first, it was intended to basically burn the excess electricity produced at night by the first generation of nuclear power plants in Belgium, at a time when it was difficult to reduce their power output on demand. From then on, because highways were always lightened up it was unnecessary to use reflective paint and signage on the highways. And today, we're left with signag…

Very interesting! I remember seeing https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/world/europe/belgium-elec...

That article seems to point to potentially larger conflicts of interest:

The official explanation is that it helps road safety and provides security. But critics doubt this and say the phenomenon sheds light not only on Belgium’s roads but also on a mutually profitable relationship among its politicians, electricity distributors and main energy supplier, Electrabel.

Re: Light Pollution Map

#76

Post by clutch89 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #26

Is this not just a population map? https://m.xkcd.com/1138/

Certainly not. See the other comments about light pollution from heavy industries (oil, etc), and also countries with lower-than-expected light pollution compared to their population, due to laws (Germany)

Re: Light Pollution Map

#77

Post by bchanudet »

dheera wrote: post #44
mvexel wrote: post #22

The data from the International Dark-Sky Association[0] would be a good complement to this. In case you're interested what a dark sky town ordinance looks like for a small town that has the designation near where I live, see here[1]. [0] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/finder/ [1] https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/torreyut/latest/torrey...

Ironically, it's not very international. 22 out of the 29 "International" Dark Sky Communities are in the US: https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/communiti... I can think of a lot of towns outside the US that have excellent dark skies but they aren't listed here.

Dark Sky communities are only one kind of designations, there are also Dark Sky "Parks" [0], "Reserves" [1], and "Sanctuaries" [2]. Those are much more scattered through the world.

[0] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/

[1] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/reserves/

[2] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/sanctuari...

Re: Light Pollution Map

#80

Post by monocasa »

The map around Denver seems questionable. Same falloff in the plains to the east as in the high mountains directly to the west doesn't match my experiences.
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