Lunacy

[altivo]

The moon was almost swallowed by [something] early this morning. We heard it was going to happen, but the peak drama was to be around 3 am local time. An hour before we normally go to bed, it was clear and the full moon was bright, which is unusual for us these days. At bedtime there was heavy cloud cover and not a star to be seen, so I figured that just like all the recent astronomical events, it would be invisible here.

Wrong. Gary got up to let the dog out at 3 am, and the sky was spectacularly clear. He came back in to tell me and I went out to look (despite the temperature of 20°F and wind chills even lower.) It was indeed clear. About three quarters of the moon was darkened but still visible, and the rest of it was bright. I haven't seen a real lunar eclipse since, oh, maybe 40 years ago or something. But I was more taken by the stars. Orion was riding high and majestic, just brilliant down even to the dimmer stars in his sword. The light pollution from the recently overdeveloped area around Huntley just barely missed his feet. My head was too muzzy and my feet too cold to stay out there for long, but it was a spectacular view as well as the lesson about light pollution. The sky was really clear, but the big glow from Huntley to the southeast and Rockford to the west still overcame the stars in those directions. I imagine a lot of people these days have never even seen a real starry sky.

As recently as 20 years ago, we could see the Milky Way easily here in a clear sky like that. Now it isn't even perceivable. That's really sad.

Comments

[hrrunka]

I grew up in Kenya when street lighting was a rarity even on the outskirts of the larger towns and cities. The glory of a dark sky on a clear night, especially if you're at a few thousand feet above sea level, is something to remember. These days street lighting is far more widespread, and the glory a lot harder to find.

Here in the UK there are very few truly dark sites, and in residential areas we have the added curse of (usually passive-IR controlled) floodlights on paths, driveways and gardens that are often installed so that half the light they produce goes straight into the sky. Back when 500W halogen fittings were common, folk at least sometimes made sure they weren't on for long, but with the modern breed of LEDs which chew only a few watts people aren't so concerned about their electricity bills.

[altivo]

Right. Of course in Kenya you had an almost entirely different starscape too. I'm no traveler, and will probably never make it to that hemisphere, so I envy you having seen those stars.

Back when I was in my teens and before, I used to really love going to visit my grandparents who always lived on a lake shore (three different ones in my lifetime) and in what was a dark sky area back then. At the end of their lives, they were somewhat north of Traverse City, and it was really dark there. Now my brother and sister-in-law live just a few miles from the same place, and actually on the Old Mission Peninsula, which juts out into the middle of Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. I had hoped for dark sky conditions there, but no such luck. Traverse City has grown tremendously over the last half century, and obscures the night sky for at least 30 miles in every direction. Here we are about ten miles from moderately sized population centers in several directions, and twenty miles from larger ones. I am pleased to see that Woodstock is making some (probably token) efforts toward less light pollution from street lighting, but of course there are no limits on night time lighting from homes or advertising signs.

One of the first things we did when we bought this place was disable the "security" lighting on the outside of the barns and house. There are switched flood lights on the outside of the house and one of the barns, and that's more than adequate in my opinion. I remember a colleague at work (I was still commuting to Columbia College in Chicago daily at that time; Yay, railroads,) asking me why I wasn't afraid of being out in such a dark place at night. My response was to ask her why she was afraid, and she couldn't come up with a specific reason.

I do like LED lighting and the way it is bright yet saves a lot of electricity, but we take advantage of that mostly indoors. Even outdoors, it would only be used occasionally and in summer when the tree cover around the house and barns is so dense that almost nothing would go upward.

[hrrunka]

So often the outdoor floodlights are mounted with the flat glass almost vertical. If you want the ground lit up then the lights need to be high up with the glass horizontal. You'd think lighting professionals would know this and mount the things accordingly, but most of the ones down our road shine straight out. There's one a couple of hundred yards away that illuminates our bedroom ceiling when it comes on, as it does every time a fox, badger, cat or deer wanders past. I must figure out a way to shield my meteor camera from it, as I've noticed it sometimes triggers the meteor detection algorithm.

[altivo]

All of our floods are tilted down toward the ground. Some are mounted on the gable of the horse barn, 20 feet up, and would be worthless unless pointed down. (Also a pain to replace a bulb, but we've only had to do that once in 23 years.)

Some of our neighbors have "driveway lights" that are pointed horizontally, and as you say, they shine right in our windows even from several hundred feet away. Worse, they shine right in the eyes of anyone coming up their driveway. The most offensive of these is gone now, thank goodness. Property was sold, new owners changed the light configuration. Unfortunately they still tend to leave it on all night, but not always. It's erratic.

I think one of the worst problems are those decorative garden path lights that come mounted on stakes and are solar powered. They invariably point stright up with no way to adjust that. People enamored with "fairy lights" seem to love them but in my opinion they are worthless as illumnation and just a major nuisance.

[hrrunka]

There was one such shine-in-your-eyes automatic light on this house when we moved in back in 2018. Our drive slopes up steeply. Why did anybody think that having a light shining directly down it was a good idea? It went within the day.

Most of the decorative lights here aren't that bright, and the solar panel's often on the top so the light from the LED gets directed down. In winter there's always the chance we won't get enough sun during the day, and the batteries quickly go flat. The manufacturers always skimp on the area of solar cell needed, and usually also on charge monitoring electronics, so the things generally have a relatively brief life. We're already, it seems, in the season for winter decorative lighting of the multi-coloured blinking variety. Roll on January...

[deffox]

I briefly woke up during the night, and seen the moon. Though I was still mostly asleep and only looked from the window instead of going outside.

[altivo]

I often try to deliberately wake and see astronomical stuff. Worked once (just once) for an aurora display. Couple of times for bright comets when we lived in the city. But that's about it.

Aurora is particularly elusive at this latitude. Usually low to the horizon and fairly dim, so any haze or clouds will obscure it. Fortunately it's due north where we have less light pollution. The best display I've seen was by accident and unexpected by me. I was lucky in that I was driving from Detroit to Lansing in Michigan late at night. In the middle of that route, things do get quite dark, and I was taking a state highway rather than the big interstate, so there were no streetlights. I noticed something curious in the sky, and stopped when there was a lake on the north side of the road. Sure enough, it was an aurora, all green and purple and flickering in and out. I stood and watched it for quite a while.