Light pollution is becoming a big issue in major cities across the world and Skyglow project team aims to bring focus on light pollution. Skyglow project shared an image of New York City night sky without light pollution. Too much light from artificial sources in majority of big cities blocks out the visibility of many stars. Skyglow project shared a video to promote upcoming awareness event, Dark Sky Week.
The International Dark Sky Association is organizing Dark Sky Week from April 15 to 21. The organization was setup in 1988 to protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.
The group urges people to turn off unnecessary lights during night time in order to reduce light pollution. The members of association believe that raising awareness among people by sharing images of real night sky (with artificial lights) would help motivate people to turn off lights during night. Earlier, International Dark Sky Association shared a similar video showing Los Angeles night sky.
The video was created by Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan. The time-lapse video shared by Skyglow project combines New York City’s sights with the dark night skies of the Grand Canyon and Death Valley national parks.
The video doesn’t feature ‘real footage’ but appears realistic. The team has amazingly combined the nighttime stars as seen in the Grand Canyon, Death Valley with images from popular New York City locations.
The inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light – known as light pollution – can have serious environmental consequences for humans, wildlife, and our climate. Components of light pollution include glarge, skyglow, light trespass and clutter.
According to the 2016 groundbreaking “World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness,” 80 percent of the world’s population lives under skyglow. In the United States and Europe 99 percent of the public can’t experience a natural night!
Light pollution is a side effect of industrial civilization. Its sources include building exterior and interior lighting, advertising, commercial properties, offices, factories, streetlights, and illuminated sporting venues.
The fact is that much outdoor lighting used at night is inefficient, overly bright, poorly targeted, improperly shielded, and, in many cases, completely unnecessary. This light, and the electricity used to create it, is being wasted by spilling it into the sky, rather than focusing it on to the actual objects and areas that people want illuminated.