Bill Nye Speaks Out Against Light Pollution

In September 2011 along with the IDA executive director I had the chance to meet Bill Nye over at the Planetary Society offices.

It should be no surprise that the night sky has been a source of inspiration for their members.  A beautiful, inspiring sky can help make you want to explore the universe. We talked about how the two organizations might work together and it led to my article that was the cover story for last summer's issue of The Planetary Report.

Another eventual result of that meeting what that Bill Nye recorded a short statement on light pollution.  Check it out:


 It is great to have one of the more famous, dare I say, Science Guys on the planet speak out about this issue.

Of course, before there was Bill Nye there was Carl Sagan (one of the co-founders of the Planetary Society). Sagan had a passage on light pollution in his book Pale Blue Dot. It was moving enough that I used the quote to begin my article and I present it now here:

Before we invented civilization, our ancestors lived mainly in the open, out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment, we watched the stars. There were practical calendrical reasons, of course, but there was more to it than that. Even today, the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years, it still takes my breath away.

Well said, don't you agree?

Dark Sky & Lighitng Videos

If you are looking for a series of short but informative videos on lighting and light pollution, you should follow The Dark Ranger on YouTube.  They are the work of Kevin Poe, a ranger in Bryce Canyon National Park.

I have embedded two of his videos below. At the recent annual general meeting of the International Dark-Sky Association, he was presented with a Dark Sky Defender award. In the first video he talks about getting the award and the lighting of a city I know quite well:

Now check out Urgings for a Globe Free Globe:

Coming up in the next post, another video on light pollution from a world-renowned science expert.

It is another commercial!  Okay, most of us have too many commercials in our lives, but I am sharing this one for Bing (I don't even use Bing) because it servers as another reminder that the night sky is an important part of our lives that we are starting to loose. Like in the commercial in the Billy post below, it shows that this message is starting to become a part of mainstream media.

I have a couple of other videos to share over the next few days, so if anyone is reading Visible Suns check back again soon.

India from Space at Night

In case you missed it, here is an amazing image of India from space at night.

The image, taken November 12 2012, was published on the NASA Earth Observatory site. The image shows the density of population there. The lights of more than 1.2 billion people are represented here. India has 30 cities with populations over 1 million - imagine how much energy could be conserved if the lights were retrofitted so as to not shine wastefully upward into space.

By the way cities in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan are also visible near the edges of the image.

There are several high-resolution download options on the NASA site that are worth checking out, including a Google Earth KML file.

Another Commercial (Sorry)

Back again, this time posting a commercial from a few years ago, again with an astronomical theme.

What do you think? Are there other astronomically-themed commercials out there that have caught your eye?

An Astronomy Themed Commecial

Gosh, has it really been since July? Sorry about that.  I will be blogging more soon about light pollution and other things on my mind.

Until then, check out this cool commercial from Dell: Meet Billy: The boy who captured the stars

Arthur C. Clarke on Light Pollution

I can't tell you how many of Arthur C. Clarke's books I have read. I have a dozen or so in my collection today, but have read many times that. His words took me far across the universe and back again many times. He was certainly one of the authors who helped to cement my love of astronomy, space and science fiction.

Back in 2001 Clarke recorded a short message of support for the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and its efforts to fight light pollution. I remember seeing a quote from it in an IDA newsletter when Clarke passed away in 2008.

Flash forward to 2012 where I am now working for the IDA. I was going through some old junk at the office, deciding what should be tossed and what should be kept when I ran across the Clarke video tape. After some effort finding a working VCR I confirmed that this indeed was the message that Clarke had recorded for IDA back in 2001 (a good year for it, don't you think?).

I didn't know if other copies of the tape had been made or not, but I knew that it had to be preserved and seen. I got it digitized and just recently had the chance to put it together and post it up for the world to see. So here it is:

I am happy to have found the tape and that I could help to get Sir Arthur's message out to the world.