By John Sutter
The new fluorescent lights that just got installed above my desk are about four times as bright as the sun. I think they’re boiling my coffee. Maybe it’s this hyper intense lighting environment that makes the International Dark-Sky Association seem so interesting at the moment.
The group–which advocates for energy efficiency and less “light pollution”–has a list of light fixtures and street lamps that aren’t so bright that they dim the night sky. According to a Wall Street Journal article featuring the group, two-thirds of people on earth, and almost everyone in the continental U.S., lives in a place where you can’t see the stars anymore, thanks mostly to city lighting. Nocturnal ecosystems are hurt by the abundant light, also, the group says. And one study found women who spend a lot of time in highly lit night areas have an increased risk of breast cancer. As U.S. News and World Report says:
Blind women have low rates of breast cancer. So do women in underdeveloped countries, where artificial lighting is an uncommon luxury. By contrast, female nurses and other women who frequently work night shifts have high breast cancer rates. The reason, experts believe, is that their schedules expose them to illumination during what should be the darkest hours of their days, and that disrupts the body’s production of the cancer-suppressing hormone melatonin.
Oklahoma’s still got some primo dark territory, though, so not all is lost. In October, a group of astronomers meets in Kenton, OK, at the very tip of the Panhandle, to star watch at one of the darkest of the dark spots. There are fewer than 20 people who live in Kenton, and there’s only one store in town, so I’m guessing the canyon lands get pretty spooky-dark at night. The astronomers at the Okie-Tex Star Party have a long list of lights-out rules that you should be sure to check out before you actually go to an event that lasts all night and where no light use–without a red cover–is allowed. (Apparently there’s some kind of attachment you can get for your computer screen).
I might try to make it out there this year, but it’s a pretty long drive — like more than 6 hours from Oklahoma City. Seems like a lame excuse, though, considering people from California have signed up on the Web site to come to the event.
Just because it’s tangentially related, here’s a video from the Tulsa World about a high school science teacher in McAlester who got a grant to build his own observatory, of sorts: