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.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2021-11-20 03:48 pm (UTC)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.