Image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51): Credit - K. Fricke/MONET/McDonald Obs.
Along with all sorts of environmental pollution on our planet – have you ever thought that light is a menacing type of contamination? It’s true for all the nighttime sky watchers out there!
The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory is kicking off a campaign to promote awareness of the causes, effects, and solutions to light pollution — stray light shone into the sky where it’s wasted, rather than down on the ground where it’s useful.
Taking up the information campaign is the Observatory’s nationally syndicated StarDate radio program, its Spanish-language radio program Universo, and through online video and summer programs on-site at its home in West Texas.
Light pollution isn’t only a problem for astronomers and sky watchers.
The International Dark-Sky Association estimates Americans lose $10 billion each year paying for light that is wasted — as it’s shone into the sky, instead of down on the ground where it’s needed. This wasted light isn’t making people safer in parking lots and outside their homes. And this unusable light is powered by wasted electricity, unnecessarily adding thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
Part of the campaign also involves the half-dozen workshops for K-12 teachers held at the Observatory this summer will include dark skies information, best-practices lighting demonstrations, and provide red flashlights to about 100 teachers – flashlights that preserve dark-adapted vision for sky watching.
The Observatory has produced a three-minute video detailing easy steps that we can all take to preserve the night sky. This video is posted at the Observatory’s Dark Skies Web site:
http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/darkskies
Also, it is via a YouTube channel:
Go to:
http://www.youtube.com/mcdonaldobservatory
By Leonard David