I’ve never paid much attention to the night skies until recently. I grew up in the middle of suburbia, about 15 miles outside of a major city. A clear night at home would feature Orion’s Belt and a few other bright stars, and I was appreciative to have them. Otherwise, hazy brownish–grayish–blackish skies were expected. It took traveling far from home to find just how much was typically obscured from my backyard view, hidden by bright lights from just about every direction.
This semester, by comparison, I’ve been spoiled with lovely night sky views. My first view of the Milky Way was at Big Bald; after sunset I turned my attention from the horizon to the skies. Despite a moon bright enough to cast shadows, the stars were as lovely as I’ve ever seen them. I almost strained my neck while sitting around the campfire from looking up so constantly. I struggled to peel my attention away from them to go to sleep. Another night at the bio station I was chatting on the phone while sitting outside and was pleasantly surprised when I noticed the Milky Way was visible again. Most recently, while camping at Little Green Mountain, I was fixated on the sky while laying in my sleeping bag. When watching closely, peering through the breaks in the clouds, I was lucky enough to see a few shooting stars; meteors from the Northern Taurid meteor shower.
Urban areas are expanding, making the effects of light pollution even farther reaching, impacting more and more ecological communities. Even lights from small towns can stretch for many miles, impacting more area than I would have imagined before witnessing the mountains silhouetted by lights from the valley on the other side. Looking out over Sunset Rock I can see the LED headlights of a car from about half a mile away.
It’s times like these where I imagine having a giant switch or lever to pull, somehow connected to all the lights around, that I could use to just turn everything off. All the streetlights, car headlights, and lights from windows of big houses high on mountain sides would all go out (I realize the impracticality and impossibility of this, but just imagine). And from this point, we could all just look up and enjoy the peaceful dark every night. In a more practical reality, I would just ask that lights be focused downward and unnecessary lights (the advertisements that light up, or those lights that just point at the fronts of houses for whatever reason) be turned off at night – but that’s not as much fun.
The impacts of light pollution aren’t just aesthetic, and I’m not the only one so strongly opposed to it. Artificially bright skies can impact all sorts of other critters. It can interrupt natural migration patterns as well as the circadian rhythm, and an altered sleep pattern can cause a whole host of other issues. Lights can also attract things like bugs and moths, which attracts their predators into urban areas where they may not be safe. Even plants can be disturbed by light pollution; some trees in urban areas have been observed to start budding earlier in the spring due to longer perceived day lengths.
Sometimes it’s hard to study environmental science, we’re told all the different ways that humans are polluting the earth – through lights, sounds, plastics, greenhouse gasses, etc. It’s evident in all parts of our world, and nothing is left out. Beyond this, there are so many issues that we’re made aware of that have clear solutions that just won’t be implemented. It can very easily be discouraging. Recently I’ve been able to find a little solace in the stars.
They used to be daunting to me, a reminder of how small I am in the universe. Now I find it comforting to think of how stars can be such strong links between people, and how they can be appreciated in so many different capacities. Every person to have walked this earth has seen so many of the same stars, used for navigation and storytelling, science and religion. When I would look for the three stars of Orion’s Belt from the suburbs growing up, I was looking to the same place in the sky as the Cherokee did so many years ago. I used the constellation as inspiration for an art project, and the Cherokee used it to map where to locate council houses. I found so much beauty in the stars I could see as a child, even though I saw them through a muddied, polluted lens. I try to apply the same mindset to other environmental issues as well. Despite learning about the ways that the earth has been damaged; it is important to remember just how much beauty is left, and how important it is to protect it.
* Please note that the light in each picture isn't quite to scale -- It's not easy to get good pictures of the stars (or night sky in general) on a phone camera
- Paige Hannam
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