The Death of the Stars

A friend sent me this thought provoking article (Shout out Emily), "The Dark Side" from the New Yorker describing civilization's assault on the stars. For instance, for someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To recapture a night sky of equivalent darkness that Galileo must have gazed at one needs to travel to the Australian outback, the mountains in Peru or (in my opinion) right smack dab in the middle of the ocean with no running lights--(my lucky brother).

Read more to learn how excessive, poorly designed outdoor lighting wastes electricity, imperils human health and safety and increasingly, deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky, a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery, and plain old jaw-dropping wonder.