16
votes
'Noctalgia' is a feature of the modern age for humans, animals suffer from the loss of dark skies too
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- Title
- The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it
- Authors
- Paul Sutter
- Published
- Sep 18 2023
- Word count
- 787 words
I still get that same awe inspiring feeling by looking at the stars as I did as a kid. I don't think anything else can put our lives in perspective the same way looking at the night sky can. I live close to a major city so my night sky is not the best, but still decent enough to easily see most constellations and I can find the Andromeda galaxy with my binoculars.
I feel like it is hard to talk about the problems of light pollution because it seems like a luxury problem for hobbyists and other issues take priority. Like the need to feel safe walking home at night, but of course there are better solutions for street lights that don’t have too much light going upwards.
The night sky is one of very few completely recoverable resources. If we fixed (or even moderated) our light pollution, we’d be able to see the same sky that hundreds of thousands of years of humans and hominids saw.
+/- hundreds of thousands of upcoming low-earth-orbit satellites we haven't seen fit to ban yet.
but it translates to “night pain” which is seems more apt.
It's definitely a depressing phenomenon. My relatives have a lake house in Michigan, and the night sky is always so striking there. My dad and I went out every night on our last visit a few years ago, watching more and more stars seem to blink into existence as our eyes adjusted was magical. We happened to be there during the Perseids, and we spent probably at least half an hour watching it. And I know there are other areas with even clearer skies.
My own house is in the suburbs, so while I'm not in the heart of a city, the light pollution is still noticeable. I find that it's especially noticeable in winter when there's snow. At other times of the year I can't see our back fence at night, but the snow reflects the light from the sky so strongly that I can see everything clearly at 2 am as if it were daytime. It definitely confuses my internal clock, if I woke up at that hour I'd think it was dawn based on the amount of light. I can't imagine how bad it messes with animals that don't use clocks.