StreetLightNews

In a New Yorker article, David Owen describes how dark skies are increasingly difficult to find. He states that most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way where they live. Obviously, the stars have not become dimmer, but excess light increasingly prevents us from seing the entire beauty of the skies at night.
According to Bortle’s Dark-Sky Scale, invented by John E. Bortle in 2001, nighttime skies rated 1 are as dark as in Galileo’s time. At the other end of the scale is New York with a dark-sky rating of 9.
But there are several ways of avoiding, or at least minimizing, the light pollution from urbanized areas. Naturally, improved street lights are a big factor in reducing the excess light. Not only through retrofitting the luminaires and bulbs, but also by controlling that the lights are turned off and posibly dimmed at the most optimal times. For more information on centralized control and dimming, see e.g. www.amplex.dk or www.streetlight-vision.com.
To read an abstract of the New Yorker-article, click here…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under dark skies, improved lighting, dimming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.