Mastodawn

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 2

15 years ago, I co-authored my first paper in the field of #LightPollution studies: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017307

Up to that point, work on artificial brightening of the sky had been done almost entirely by astronomers, who (for obvious reasons) weren't really interested in cloudy nights. But because I was involved closely with ecologists from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries @LeibnizIGB, we realized that it's also important to measure the extent to which overcast and clear nights differ.

Through a bunch of twists and turns I now work on #RemoteSensing using nighttime light, but that was the paper that launched me into this direction.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 2

Most people in brightly lit countries probably take for granted that clouds are bright at night, but this is completely unnatural. You can see it better in this pair of photos we published in a later paper (titled "Red is the new black"): https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21559.x

This probably matters a great deal for nocturnal animals, because it's a reversal of an environmental condition that existed during the hundreds of millions of years that life evolved.

James Endres Howell Mar 2

@skyglowberlin I teach large university science courses. Hundreds of fairly privileged students in the room. It has been my habit to ask them to raise their hands if they have ever seen the Milky Way.

The results have always been disappointing. Over the past 20 years it has gotten worse and worse. Recently many students don't even know what I mean by the question, and I have to explain what a dark sky looks like.

"Raise your hand if you have ever been awed by a clear dark sky full of countless, countless stars." Always less than 5%.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 2

@jameshowell Yeah, it's rough to hear things like that. I remember hearing from some people from (I think) the US NPS that they created a scene with virtual reality goggles to show people what a natural sky looks like when you are dark adapted, and a lot of the people who experienced it didn't believe that it could be real 😥

Steve Lim Mar 4

James Endres Howell

@skyglowberlin When I teach about retinal physiology, it breaks my heart. Often there isn't a single student who has ever experienced vision after true dark adaptation.

It turns out that—it takes time, but it's real—you can see by starlight. And the faintest stars you see? That's a single rod cell detecting A SINGLE PHOTON. Your retina is that sensitive.

Before 1879 this was an absolutely universal human experience. Now it's exotic, unimaginable.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 3

@jameshowell Yup. If I won the lottery, one of the studies I would love to fund would be to see whether adults who grew up in rural settings have superior night vision to those who grew up in the city.

If you never train your visual system to see with rods only, does it still develop normally?

James Endres Howell Mar 3

@skyglowberlin Almost certainly not.

It's an empirical question: you have to do the experiment. But all of developmental neurobiology shows us that disuse leads to loss, and disuse during critical developmental windows leads to permanent loss. Your hypothesis is almost certainly correct.

@jameshowell @skyglowberlin reading this on my glowing rectangle with aging eyes is super depressing!

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. The milky way with my naked eyes. I navigated a trail by the moonlight. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

glasspshr Mar 4

@skyglowberlin @jameshowell I’ve been an amateur astronomer since I was 11 and had a home darkroom for photography soon after. I’ve let people know what can be done and seen in low light.

One time, winter hiking in New Hampshire, my flashlight batteries died and I hiked another 2 miles under just the illumination of a clear night sky. Mars was the brightest thing out.

James Endres Howell Mar 4

@glasspusher @skyglowberlin Hiking by marsshine

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 4

@glasspusher @jameshowell There's a path through the woods in Brandenburg that I've walked several kilometers along on starlit nights without a moon. I couldn't actually see the ground because of the foliage, but I could follow the path because of the lighter areas between the trees.

This isn't a great idea, though - if someone had dug a big hole in the ground I would likely have fallen in. But it shows what's possible when you know the area and the pathway is flat.

glasspshr Mar 4

@skyglowberlin @jameshowell

Yes, when I did the above hike, I could see the trail in front of me- footsteps in the snow.

Back when I lived in Oakland, one night I walked my regular jogging trail through a park( very narrow). I was under tree cover which made it darker, as I was looking for luminescent mushrooms. I found I could keep on the path by feeling, as I walked, that the ground was harder on the trail than the edges.

Pushed the limits of what I could see in low light, and noticed that my other senses were filling in the experience more.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 4

@glasspusher @jameshowell Yes, walking slowly and feeling the ground your feet is very important in such a situation.

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱Mar 4

@jameshowell @siracusa @skyglowberlin What I miss most about my hometown in rural eastern Washington State is the night sky.

It wasn't akin to being in Antarctica or anything, but I DID grow up being able to stare up to see the “band” of the Milky Way. One of my first major interests as a kid was astronomy. Even had my own telescope.

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱Mar 4

@jameshowell @siracusa @skyglowberlin I now live just outside of Los Angeles.

LA has made great strides in reducing air pollution, but light pollution still basically precludes any real observation of the night sky. Stars are barely a thing here.

If I were a kid living here I very much doubt I'd have developed that interest in astronomy.

Roadskater, Ph.D.Mar 4

@jeff @jameshowell @siracusa @skyglowberlin Ditto my hometown in eastern Idaho. I remember flying home from school in Houston for Christmas back in the late 1980s, stepping out the airport door, and OMG, I haven't seen so many stars in a loooong time.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 4

@jeff @jameshowell @siracusa You can still see the Milky Way outside of the small town where I grew up, but it's a lot more washed out than it was when I was a child, and the glow from Edmonton that used to be contained towards one horizon has stretched to the Zenith.

@jameshowell @skyglowberlin When I would take my kids camping far far away from the city lights, we would always go out late at night, down to the beach at the river and lay there in the dark, looking at the stars for 30-60 minutes. And the kids always wanted to use their flashlights but I forbid them. They never had problems getting back to camp on the way back. :)

Jon Tringham Mar 4

@jameshowell @skyglowberlin a few years ago I joined a Meetup for a night walk in the Japanese alps. The guide, who also sailed, gave us red LEDs to get to our starting point, where there was no artificial light. Then we turned the torches off and waited half an hour for our eyes to adapt. It was amazing, I’d never experienced anything like it.

Generally Salty Mar 4

@jontringham @jameshowell @skyglowberlin on a high school field science trip, we descended into some abandoned mines out in the California desert at night. The complete darkness and silence was pretty unnerving, but when our vision had adapted and we came back up, the clear night desert sky was glorious.

I've never experienced that since.

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 4

Incident Creator ❎Mar 4

@jameshowell
I used to go in deep caves. I've sat there until all I could see was mental static, then turned my digital watch on pointing it away. I did not expect the way the shape of the cave formed up in my vision. Try it sometime (though maybe not with a modern smartwatch).
@skyglowberlin

Christopher Kyba 🇨🇦🇪🇺Mar 4

@vik @jameshowell I don't have much experience with caves (or access to them), but I've had similar experiences in indoor spaces with strong light shielding.

Andrew White Mar 4

@jameshowell @skyglowberlin if you talk to people who experienced the three-day power outage in Ontario in a big city you’ll often find that is one of their most profound memories of the event.

@[email protected] @[email protected] I grew up in a rural area in the late 1970s. The Milky Way was vivid in the sky at night and I remember many nights standing outside watching for meteors and taking the presence of the Milky Way for granted. By the time I left for college, there was usually too much light pollution to see it. In the late 1990s I went on a camping trip in Australia and was astonished by how many stars were visible at night, and of course the Milky Way was prominent in the sky. It reminded me of what my hometown's sky had been like. Till then it hadn't sunk in that I'd lost it.

I feel a sense of loss and grief that the Milky Way is effectively gone for so many people, and will be gone for so many more as time passes. And when/where it is visible, it'll be streaked with satellite trails because of the apparent arms race to fill low Earth orbit with as many satellites as possible. What a terrible loss.

James Endres Howell Mar 4

@abucci @skyglowberlin Yeah, it's not a happy story. The nice stories are exceptional, and we should cherish them, in the context of a heinous collective loss.