Light pollution is robbing us of our sense of wonder

With the Perseid meteor shower peaking this weekend, I was pretty excited about the prospect of seeing some really good meteors streaking across the sky. However, because I live near a big city, I only managed to see one. The light pollution that inundates the area blocked out the rest.

Light pollution is a bane to astronomers, both professional and amateur alike, as they are cheated out of the best views of the night sky, but it also has an effect on the rest of us as well. We experience light pollution in two ways. Exceptionally bright street lamps, electric signs and other light sources outside directly interfere with our night vision when they're in our field of view, and 'excess' light from all outdoor light sources combines to creates a diffuse glow over the city.

[ Related: Here’s how to watch the Perseid meteor shower this weekend ]

Just like recent studies that showed the full moon can disrupt your sleep schedule, light pollution does this as well. Not only are bright street and parking lot lamps left on overnight, which can shine right into our bedroom windows, but the glow over the city means that we never experience full night. Since our brains evolved to expect a much deeper level of darkness when we sleep, we suffer as a result.

However, there's a psychological aspect to this as well, as it takes away our sense of wonder about the universe around us. We not only live under near constant illumination, but we live under a dull, nearly featureless ceiling. Only a few of the brightest start twinkle against that ceiling, rather than the panorama of the Milky Way Galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon every night.

For example, here's the Toronto skyline on any given cloudless night:

It's nice. Toronto has a fairly picturesque skyline. However, if we were able to remove all the light pollution that 'paints' the sky into that blue/black ceiling, we'd have something more like this:

Forgive the artistic license, as that's a north-facing view of Toronto and a south-facing view of the Milky Way, but it illustrates the point. Which view would you rather see every night? I certainly wouldn't pick the ceiling.

The main culprit in robbing us of this view are badly designed lamps along our streets and in parking lots. Roughly a half to three quarters of the light generated by these lamps doesn't do anyone any good. It lights up the ground underneath it, for sure, but only about a quarter of the light shed is really needed for that. The rest of the light shines off to the sides and above, where it only causes problems. Not only that, but with all that wasted light, it means wasted electricity, and thus wasted money.

The solution to this is to install shields over these lamps, or replace them with a shielded design. That will certainly cost money, however, as shielded lamps direct all their light downward, they can use a lower wattage bulb and still get the same effect they had before. That saves energy and thus it works out to be more cost-effective in the long run.

Lights in office buildings and from the overly-bright advertisements and other signs that we seem to need are also part of the problem. Companies could save a lot of money by turning these lights off or at least turning them down at night, and signs probably wouldn't need to be so bright if we had shielded lamps installed on streets, since they wouldn't have to compete as much for attention.

Check out the website of the International Dark-Sky Association or of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada if you'd like to learn more about this, and you can check to see if there are any dark sky initiatives or projects in your area.

[ More Geekquinox: Kirobo, the talking robot, arrives at the International Space Station ]

It's an awesome universe out there, and every night we're offered an exceptional view of it. However, due to a few poor design choices as our cities grew, we're being forced to miss out on the show. That steals away an incredible source of beauty and wonder from our daily lives, but it also changes the way we think. Seeing the full view of space around us can leave us feeling small and insignificant, but at the same time, it shows us how incredibly lucky we are to be here to witness it all.

(Images courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/Rondeau Provincial Park)

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!