light pollution

Light pollution happened slowly at first which was several decades ago it was a process that was hardly noticeable. A light here, a light there, burning way into the dark nighttime realm, helping us see in the darkness when people all their our beds fast asleep. The process still continues today, with little thought ever given to what we are stealing away. Our intentions are good but our methods need adjustment, and they needs to be done immediately. In fact, our methods should have been changed years ago, but nearly everyone has resisted, perhaps due to a profound lack of awareness. The use of too many lights at night can cause environmental pollution, known as light pollution. Light pollution can block our ability to see the original shining stars, which can affect people’s discoveries in astronomy. But since the lights are also very important for us at night when we are driving or walking alone on a street, I think there are certainly some solutions for protecting our natural environment while we can also use the lights at the same time. To admire the beautiful stars in the sky instead of looking at it in a picture, we can start to save energy resources by cutting off some unnecessary lights such as commercial building lights, outdoor residential lights, and by using shielded light to reduce the amount of light that we use in certain areas.

Light pollution is when sky glow produced by the scattering of artificial light caused by the poor quality of outdoor lighting (Nakata) causing too much wasted light dispersed upwards. Therefore recent studies show that “Nationally, more than 30% of the electricity generated for outdoor illumination is simply squandered by being misdirected into the sky. That comes to 4.5 billion dollars annually” (Lipsitz) for the electricity generated to send light into the sky and across property lines where it serves no benefit. Wasted light sent to the sky needlessly and seriously affects scientific research today for professional and amateur astronomers along with some NASA research. Astronauts have complained about this problem for years. Astronomical observatories are closing down because they can no longer see enough celestial objects to justify continuing their funding or research. For example, the Hubble telescope’s research is interrupted by light pollution, it was affected so much that astronomers did not get to see certa...

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... studded with tiny points of light coming from countless miles away will return again where they belong, where they have always been since the dawn of time itself, and where they should remain for countless generations to come” (Haas,). Starting from today, we can do a little to help protecting our homeland that everybody shares, and give the chances to see the real stars in the future.

Work Cited Page

Lipsitz, Joshua D. “Preliminary results of an Internet survey.” Light pollution (13 Feb. 2001): 26

Mullen, Rutledge M. and Swain S. Modeling the Process of Science: Investigating the effects of light pollution. Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State University, 1987.

Nakata, Goshima K. “Despite light.” Journal of the Galaxy. 23.4 (1997): 897-907

“Shields to make light work of city pollution.” Nature 416: 6879 (28 Mar.2002): 358-364

Nadis, Steve. “Biologists join drive to turn down the lights.” Nature 419: 6910 (31Oct. 2002): 868

Rao, Joe. “A clean, well-lighted planet.” Natural History 106:7 (Sep. 97): 70

Wainwright, Martin. “Bright lights do not deter criminals.” The Guardian

(21 Nov. 2003): 14

Haas, Cliff. “Where has the night sky gone, and why should we care?”(Apr. 2000): 282