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I just was on a panel for DarkSky International's Under One Sky conference. The panel was about novel and emerging sources of light pollution, I was there to yell a lot about Reflect Orbital.
One of the other panelists was Jolyon Troscianko, who studies animal vision at night (how totally cool!) and he was talking about headlights as a source of very bright, pulsed light pollution. Moths lose their night vision for at least an hour after a headlight sweeps past, possibly all night.
recently saw report about overly bright headlights temporarily blinding drivers -- that can't be good
@sundogplanets could this be part of the cause of the catastrophic decline in night flying insects generally, and moths in particular, over the past fifty years?
@sundogplanets I was impressed that for the 2017 solar total eclipse the city of Weiser Idaho turned off the darkness triggers on its street lights so that they would not come on during the eclipse.
@sundogplanets Dark Sky International sounds like a coalition of supervillains
financed by elon musk
‘s pawned tesla stocks at deutsche bank
The other panelist was @skyglowberlin, and I learned a lot from his talk! He's studied light pollution in cities, and found that about half of light pollution isn't from streetlights, it's from headlights, signs, and shop/home windows. Horizontal light is the big problem!
https://gfzpublic.gfz.de/rest/items/item_5035605_3/component/file_5035610/content
He also pointed out that light pollution is growing faster than population, everywhere, and has been since WWII
@sundogplanets @skyglowberlin
Headlights are literally blinding.
They don’t need to be that bright.
I walk every night & love the night sky- especially now with Aldebaran, Capella, Vega, Saturn so bright right now.
We are lucky we can see what we can where we are.
Gotta get past the bright ass headlights first.
@sundogplanets @skyglowberlin I spent lots of time a fair bit north of the polar circle and in very dark conditions (virtually no light pollution). Im struck by that whenever I come back home close to a major city.
This is very interesting, thanks for the link!
He talked about how France is the only country in Europe that has gotten less light polluted in recent years. Most cities and towns turn off their streetlights at night. (Part of the reason for this is because of energy prices increasing due to Russia invading Ukraine)
Notes that traffic accidents and crime rates have NOT gone up due to lights being turned off! (That is the usual argument for keeping cities brightly lit).
@sundogplanets you dont think any of those price increases have anything to do with how the pipeline carrying cheap fuel to europe was intentionally blown up so that america could gouge europeans in the wake of america's latest proxy against Russia, eh?
Im sure energy costs went up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia, Korea, Vietnam, etc etc, after the US came for those resource rich nations as well. Being awake during the 90s, I actually lived through all this...
Rape is SO BADLY reported, because it's so badly dealt with by police, and so removed from justice in courts, that I doubt report numbers up or down.
@sundogplanets Smart street lighting systems enable police to do things like call the council and say "hey, we've got intelligence that there's something going down in the city centre this coming Saturday night, can you keep the lights on full brightness all night please?"
@sundogplanets if we turn off the streetlights though, it'd be too dark to see the stars :(
@sundogplanets I can recall in the UK when I was young, all the streetlights were on timers. They came on (in batches, a street or two at a time) round about dusk, and went off somewhere between 11.30 and 12.30, then came on for a short period just before dawn. Anyone who was expecting to be out after midnight would use lights or a torch, or use their night vision on brighter nights (since there weren't many lights on to spoil it). People tended not to have bright outside lights on, either.
@sundogplanets I can confirm this from France. It was originally intended because the boycott of Russia increased prices but meanwhile it's Electricity Of France EDF becoming greedy.
And is now being continued because so many local authorities are becoming increasingly impoverished.
We take pocket torches with us. For years, we had a protest movement demanding that also advertising signs finally be darkened, a big problem. This has only been regulated since this year! https://inspirefrance.fr/eclairage-publicitaire-2025-france-commerces-environnement/
@sundogplanets Where I live, the streetlights are turned off at 10 p.m. and turned back on at 5 or 6 a.m. We have the most magnificent starry sky, unless Musk's rubbish is dazzling us again.
Because they are French, not American.
@sundogplanets a lot of towns did it before the war I remember seen it as late as 2014
Ok time to get off Zoom and mastodon and go embrace the cold, I guess.
@sundogplanets brb - adding these to my 'reasons why cars are trash' list..
It's possible to see the pink glow from the sunrise on the metal barn in the first pic.
I know it's cold but you do live in a wonderful place.
The little chicks made me go all Awwwwwwwww...
(But I can feel the cold just from the first two pictures...)
@sundogplanets That's interesting about moths losing their night vision.
Is there also light pollution outside of the range of human vision?
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