Our night sky is disappearing in the fog of light pollution, faster than expected.

[Gmetric]

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-visibilit ... lines.html

[Unitron48]

Pretty sad, but not unexpected...

Dave

[helicon]

Pretty upsetting actually. LED's were supposed to improve conditions compared with unhooded sodium vapor lights but that is not the case.

[Gmetric]

Pretty upsetting actually. LED's were supposed to improve conditions compared with unhooded sodium vapor lights but that is not the case.

Pretty sad, but not unexpected...

Dave

Indeed, really sad state of affairs. As an astrophotographer and living in an area where all the lights are LED it's really noticeable in my images. Sadly, filter technology, other than really narrow band filters, is slow to catch up and probably won't be able to effectively filter LED light out due to its broad spectrum. Cities need dimmer switches!

[Frankskywatcher]

It’s definitely happening I’m not sure what we can do about it.
Even in my little patch of heaven I had a few neighbors moving into houses that were recently built in my area recently.
I have pleaded with them to keep the lights off at night most happily comply but I got one or two people would just leave the lights on and they leave them on 24/7 even during the day ridiculous.
https://www.darkskysociety.org/

[Unitron48]

It’s definitely happening I’m not sure what we can do about it.
Even in my little patch of heaven I had a few neighbors moving into houses that were recently built in my area recently.
I have pleaded with them to keep the lights off at night most happily comply but I got one or two people would just leave the lights on and they leave them on 24/7 even during the day ridiculous.
https://www.darkskysociety.org/

My old neighborhood was the same. I even had neighbors stop by when I had my scope out and in the process of looking through the eyepiece comment on all the lights in the area! Some were the very same ones that left the outside lights on all night long!!

We have since moved into a neighborhood less light polluted!!

Dave

[Lady Fraktor]

Luckily the village I am living in shuts down street lighting after 22:00 other than 1 light at each main intersection.
They do it for cost saving but I enjoy the benefit when the skies are clear.

[Richard]

Here in South Africa we have a major electricity problem for the last decade, and now its getting much worse sometimes 6-8hrs power cuts/day
This worked quite well for some time as the night sky definitely improved , but over time in my area most have installed solar panels and solar lights , and some even run generators , so now besides the light pollution being the same , we now have noise pollution as well .

[helicon]

My neighborhood now is quite dark as there are no streetlights. The problem is bright porch lights, motion detectors, and the like, which cause an incredible amount of ambient LP. Screening them off with a tarp seems to work. I'm also about 10 miles from town on a windy road that follows the lakeshore here, and finally nestled between two hills, Lookout Mountain and Galbraith Mountain, which creates the valley.

[Ylem]

Ugh...
Seems to get worse every year

[Juno16]

Ugh...
Seems to get worse every year

It sure does!

In my area, led lighting has made it much worse. I didn’t know how good i had it with sodium vapor lighting.

For AP, filters and processing software have improved, but they both are losing in the long run.
Don’t get me wrong, the filters and software are awesome, but dark skies (in my backyard) would surely be better!

[kt4hx]

The long term prognosis is very bad for populated areas. There are many areas of the world that are quite dark, but of course they are not somewhere most people would wish to live. Our backyard at home has degraded from Bortle 5 to 6 over the past few years as they continue to build in our region. Our second house in the far western part of the state is still a good Bortle 3. I have seen some very slight degradation there, as it used to be closer to Bortle 2 frequently. I can at times see additional sky glow to the east where more populated areas are located beyond multiple ridgelines. Those ridgelines do dampen the spread of the glow, thankfully. There is no industry located in that county nor likely to ever move there as it is totally rural and the least populated in the state (under 2,400). The county seat is under 150 population as well, and local residents like things staying the way they are (less population, less light, quiet and simple). However, I can envision a very slow uptick in sky glow over the coming years from distant population centers as those areas continue to expand outward. However, I think it will remain a darker pocket within an otherwise bright region.