[Vision2020] A "light" hearted view ...

[Jeff Harkins]

@>----

I am fascinated by the "light" perspectives.  An accountant by avocation, I 
always want to shine the light into the dark spaces so folks can see what's 
going on.  And I think a lot of folks have had a lot of fun with this topic.

The light question seems to me to be about personal priorities and good 
science.  Here is an interesting perspective posted to me because they did 
not want to experience the "flaming" that might accrue as a result of their 
post - and I am not sure that it is a sincere post ... anyway ...

The gist of their post was that the fellow and his wife really enjoyed 
nightly touring around the ridge tops and higher elevations in Latah 
County.  They enjoy very much the view of the lower elevations and in 
particular the "sparkling lights" dancing on the snow and frozen ground 
during the winter season.  They are concerned that if all the lights are 
hooded or domed to prevent light rays from the light source, there will no 
longer be twinkly and sparkly lights.  Why should the "dark sky" folks be 
allowed to take away their enjoyment of the twinkly and sparkly experience?

It is really all about priorities, isn't it.  From the sublime to the 
ridiculous - the greatest light polluter is the moon - reflecting all that 
sunlight off the moon at night - one cannot hope to see the subtle 
constellations or the auroras when the moon is out.  Should we blow it up?

And then there are all those planes, taking off and landing with their 
landing lights on.  And Jet service has just returned to Lewiston - (that 
is actually closer to Moscow than the easternmost portions of Latah 
County.  Those landing lights are extraordinarily bright and are beamed 
horizontally creating major difficulties for light pollution.  And of 
course - on a lightly overcast Palouse evening, the light reflecting off of 
the Lewiston - Clarkston valley destroys any hope of seeing the 
constellations and auroras.  On those same evenings, light reflecting on 
the clouds from the lights of Pullman are a problem.  Even from the North 
of Moscow Mountain, the lights from Potlatch can be seen reflecting off 
that lightly overcast sky.  We will have to annex all the surrounding 
counties to stop the light pollution problem.

And what about the cars and trucks traveling the Palouse highways?  Those 
lights are more or less horizontal and are reflecting all over the place.

And this thread is exactly how bad public policy gets started - a belief 
that light is what is blocking one's view of the universe.  From my high 
school physics class, I recall that in fact light is not visible to the 
human eye.  What we actually "see" is light refracting off objects, thereby 
making the object visible.  And therein lies the problem.  The reason we 
see the lights of Lewiston, Clarkston, planes landing, and so forth is 
because there are particulates in the air.  And those particulates are 
indeed why light is visible.

In fact, if we turned off every light for a 100 mile radius, we would still 
not be able to see the universe in all its splendor because turning off the 
lights would do nothing to remove the particulate from the atmosphere 
(dust, smoke and other particulate).  If you want to be able to have a fine 
grained view of the universe, you must remove all the particulate from the 
air.  That is why the night sky is so spectacular after a good rain (even 
in Moscow)!.  And when the air has been cleared of particulate (all the way 
to the edge of the atmosphere),  even with the lights all turned on, you 
can see all the stars, planets and other objects.  In fact, pointing all 
lights vertically would probably actually improve your view of the heavens 
because there would be additional light refracting off space based objects 
(much like a flashlight helps you see objects in the dark).

The problem really isn't about light pollution at all.  The problems arises 
because of particulate in the air.  Making everyone use 60 watt bulbs would 
do nothing to fix the "dark sky" problem.  It would just contribute to 
having everyone live in the dark ;-)