Reconnecting with the night sky and reining in light pollution
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How has sky glow reduced star visibility for most people?
Hi, I'm Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday. One of the summer's greatest pleasures, at least for me, happens when the sun goes down. I grab my lawn chair, my binoculars, maybe even set up my telescope, and head outside to look at the night sky. And on a really good night, out in the countryside with no moon, I might see the Milky Way or maybe Orion's Belt, even the stray meteorite. But you know what? Over the years, it seems like I'm seeing fewer and fewer stars and planets. Light pollution has dimmed my sky view, and I'm not alone. Scientists have estimated that more than 80% of the world's population, more than 99% of people in the U.S. and Europe, live under light-polluted skies.
That light in the night is called sky glow, and it is ruining our nighttime views. My first guest set out on a bicycle to document the sky glow and to find out how artificial lights at night are affecting the sky, the environment, and us. Craig Childs is a writer. His latest book is called The Wild Dark, Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light. And it's our Sci-Fi Book Club pick for July. You can read right along with us. Head to sciencefriday.com slash book club. Craig, welcome to Science Friday.
Thanks for having me, Ira.
You're welcome. Let's talk about your trip. Give me the ABCs of what you did.
Well, I started in Las Vegas, on the Las Vegas strip with a bike loaded for 10 days of backcountry and a companion who was equally loaded up. And we biked out of the city and headed for the darkest place we could find.
Where did you start your trip and where were you going?
Well, we went due north out of Vegas into the Mojave Desert, to the Desert Wildlife Refuge, and just out on these rough roads for 200 miles to basically see how the night would change, what kind of sky we would get for nine sequential nights going into the desert.
And why a bike? Why not hop in a car?
Well, you know, a bike is the right pace. If you're driving, you would get to where we're going too quickly. And I wanted to see that transition. I wanted to see each night become entirely different. And walking would be too slow because I don't think I would have... really seen that transition. So biking was the right pace to get a different sky so that each night we're looking at a completely new experience and we're going across the new moon. So we're missing any moon glow and we're seeing just the full clear night sky.
Where did this idea come from, Craig? What got you interested in this?
Well, it seems like everything I'm writing about has a night sky in it, that there is always some reference to stars, planets, because it's really half the experience of being in the world, and I'm outdoors most of the time. So I've got this focus on the night, and... I've lived in bright places and mostly in dark places, but I find that it's such a powerful experience to see a full set of stars that I wanted to know what it's like to go from brightest to darkest and how that transition affects you, how it affects your eyes, your body, your experience in general.
It can be pretty spooky, you know, that total change of atmosphere.
Yeah, you're looking at infinity, which, you know, during the day you're not. During the day you're looking at sky and during the night you're looking at space.
Right. And so how did you pick your stops where you were going to stop?
Uh, where we ran out of energy, where we just, uh, I was, I was using, uh, what's called the Bortles scale, which is a nine level scale from nine being the brightest sky, which was Las Vegas trip to one being the darkest sky that you could, you could find. Uh, and, and so each night it really was, uh, We would bike into the dark and we would just finally go, okay, that's far enough. Stars are coming out. Let's drop here.
What's a Bortle? Is that named after somebody? Yeah.
It's a perfect astronomy word. and I was drawn to it partly because of the name, because it sounds like something hurtling through space.
Right, it really does. Now, I remember being in Las Vegas once, and there's a national park outside there, and there was an astronomy viewing club in the park, and the contrast between the light in Las Vegas and what was going on like 20 miles away was amazing.
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