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Light Pollution Map
- ianbooker 6y agoEvery time I am on a motorway in Belgium I wonder why they have such a huge amount of streetlights on highways. Maybe because it doesn't matter anymore in terms of light pollution? :D
- seszett 6y agoThere's actually an explanation for this. At first, it was intended to basically burn the excess electricity produced at night by the first generation of nuclear power plants in Belgium, at a time when it was difficult to reduce their power output on demand. From then on, because highways were always lightened up it was unnecessary to use reflective paint and signage on the highways. And today, we're left with signage and paint that are difficult to read at night unless the highways are lined with streetlights, which makes streetlights necessary even though the power plants have been able to adapt to load for a long time now. You can really notice it on the dark sections that do exist, signage is actually difficult to see when in most other countries reflective signage is almost easier to see at night than by day. Now the streetlights are being slowly turned off, some are being replaced with LEDs, and some of the signage is being updated to reflective, but I don't know if there's any official roadmap to eventually arrive to dark highways with reflective signage.
- gregsadetsky 6y agoVery interesting! I remember seeing https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/world/europe/belgium-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/world/europe/belgium-elec... That article seems to point to potentially larger conflicts of interest: The official explanation is that it helps road safety and provides security. But critics doubt this and say the phenomenon sheds light not only on Belgium’s roads but also on a mutually profitable relationship among its politicians, electricity distributors and main energy supplier, Electrabel.
- exhilaration 6y agoIt looks like this site is more up to date but there's also Dark Site Finder, which is usually what I've seen suggested in stargazing discussion: https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html
- giarc 6y agoI was looking at North America as a whole, and noticed a very bright spot in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. It's almost one of the biggest spots. Wikipedia tells me it has a population of basically 2000 people. Why is it so light?
- steanne 6y ago"...however, at any given time, several thousand transient workers support the Prudhoe Bay oil field."
- giarc 6y agoThe bright spot is bigger than the bright spot over Paris and London though. Do they just leave the lights on 24/7 in the bay?
- lifeformed 6y agoOil flares.
- ewhanley 6y agoPrudhoe is a massive oilfield. It's thousands of wells spread covering an area around 200k acres. Every well pad and facility has lighting. Oilfields operate 24/7 so the lights are always on. Of course there's ~24 hours of daylight for half the year on the North Slope and ~24 hours of darkness in winter.
- afterburner 6y agoOil installations are extremely well lit.
- Pyrodogg 6y agoOil industry. Same reason western North Dakota looks like a major metropolitan area.
- toddsiegel 6y ago
- mygoodaccount 6y agoThe site appears to be using OpenStreetMaps based on the font. But I don't see any attribution to OSM anywhere on the site? It's a part of the agreement to use OSM... *I was wrong
- nattaylor 6y agoIt uses Bing Maps and has this: © 2021 Microsoft CorporationEarthstar Geographics SIO© 2021 TomTomTerms of Use Jurij Stare, www.lightpollutionmap.info (v2.7.7) VIIRS Earth Observation Group, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center
- tppiotrowski 6y agoAre you using a framework for your map or did you come up with those tooltip dissolving into tic-tac-toe animations yourself?
- nattaylor 6y agoTypo corrected. I am not the creator and meant to write "It uses"
- Xophmeister 6y agoWhat are all the blobs in the North Sea? Oil rigs?
- ravenstine 6y agoDoes this tool take into account elevation? The Mt. Wilson observatory, for instance, being on the outskirts of LA, is in a red zone on that map, yet is still a great place to stargaze. Not that this map isn't useful and insightful, but perhaps it can make things seem worse than they really are? As long as you have mountains around you, it's not like you can't go there to see the stars with the naked eye. Last year, that comet was pretty easy to see from up there.
- tppiotrowski 6y agoI've camped around the Los Angles area and it is visibly bright in the mountains up to 50 miles away to the point that it feels like twilight on the horizon all night long.
- sparker72678 6y agoYou've gotta get out to a truly Dark site — sounds like you'd love it.
- krneki 6y agoWorld Atlas 2015 model accounts for elevation. So locations with higher elevation are darker. But it doesn't account for obstacles like a mountain range shielding you from a city behind it.
- geijoenr 6y agoIs amazing the amount of light pollution in Siberia around the oil/gas extraction areas.
- bigthymer 6y agoIs that the area north of Kazakhstan? That's a lot of light if so.
- rebuilder 6y agoI checked the area I live in, it's pretty rural and has no red, except for one blob that seems to be in the middle of nowhere. So I looked it up on a satellite photo and sure enough, there's a large greenhouse operation there. Seems odd that they'd be running their lights at night, though.
- dubcanada 6y agoDepends on what they are growing, cacti and orchids for example LOVE 24/7 light and grow way faster then the typical 16/8 light schedule. But most are probably some form of veggie or flower so they need 16/8 light schedule.
- rebuilder 6y agoIt's veggies, leafy greens as far as I can tell.
- the_arun 6y agoIsn't Light Pollution directly proportional to population density?
- ehsankia 6y agoIn general yes, though just looking quickly, it seems like Belgium for example was a lot brighter than surrounding countries, and I don't think they have that high of a density? I would liked to see a map like this normalized for population density, though not sure how granular that data is.
- skerit 6y agoBelgium has a pretty high population density: 375/km². That's the 9th most densely populated country of the world. And that is mostly because of Flanders, the part that is actually lit up on the map. Flanders has a population density of 484/km².
- bena 6y agoLooking at the US map, it seems to be.
- tppiotrowski 6y agoNice project! A few questions: How is this data collected? (I'm guessing a satellite image of city lights across the world) I'm trying to understand the scale. Zenith means overhead, so overhead sky brightness. The magnitude scale stops at 17 but I thought magnitudes above 7 is no longer visible to the human eye [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude
- bttrfl 6y agothis is explained in the FAQ. They merge different sources, notably data from SQMs which "stands for Sky Quality Meter. It's a small device that can measure sky quality ie. darkness. It's widely used by amateur astronomers because it's fairly cheap and gives you fast results which can be easily compared to other SQM users." https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/help.html https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/help.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Forbo 6y agoMy state designated a Dark Sky Park in an area that's Bortle class 4. Is the designation really that flawed? That's a shame, I was hoping to some decent stargazing in without having to drive for hours on end. Alas. Edit: Looks like these are the criteria the IDA use. https://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IDSP-Guidelines-2018.pdf https://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IDSP-Guid...
- mvexel 6y agoThe data from the International Dark-Sky Association[0] would be a good complement to this. In case you're interested what a dark sky town ordinance looks like for a small town that has the designation near where I live, see here[1]. [0] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/finder/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/finder/ [1] https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/torreyut/latest/torrey_ut/0-0-0-1035 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/torreyut/latest/torrey...
- dheera 6y agoIronically, it's not very international. 22 out of the 29 "International" Dark Sky Communities are in the US: https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/communities/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/communiti... I can think of a lot of towns outside the US that have excellent dark skies but they aren't listed here.
- bchanudet 6y agoDark Sky communities are only one kind of designations, there are also Dark Sky "Parks" [0], "Reserves" [1], and "Sanctuaries" [2]. Those are much more scattered through the world. [0] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/ [1] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/reserves/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/reserves/ [2] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/sanctuaries/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/sanctuari...
- dheera 6y agoIt still looks very US-biased. I can think of several dozen places and parks in northern Scandinavia, western China, Mongolia, Canada that are almost devoid of light pollution that aren't even on this list. Also almost the entire country of Iceland and all of its parks are excellent dark sky and not even mentioned here. And that's just places I have personally been. I'm sure there are huge parts of Africa, Australia and the Middle East, and South America are excellent as well, and one would think that if I were to travel to those continents that I could look to a website called the "International" Dark Sky Association to find out where the best dark sky parks are in those places. But no. It just seems a bit hypocritical to me to call it "International" but with very little attention to the wealth of excellent dark sky areas outside the US.
- mig39 6y agoIs the light pollution in the North Sea really that intense? How about the Grand Banks off Atlantic Canada / Newfoundland? Are these due to oil platforms? I find it hard to believe that the light pollution at the head of the Grand Banks, almost 200km off shore, is equivalent to the the metro area of St. John's, nearby.
- birktj 6y agoThe North Sea ones are oil platforms, yes. I believe the light intensity is largely because of gas flares [1], but I might be wrong. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare
- nemacol 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernia_oil_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernia_oil_field Just found this as I was attempting to figure out what the bright light is off Newfoundland.
- afterburner 6y agoIt's probably just because oil installations tend to be very well lit, probably for safety.
- cozzyd 6y agoYeah, the oil fields seem insanely bright relative to cities. I wonder if this has something to do with the sensor spectral sensitivity or something...
- tut-urut-utut 6y agoIt's not like nothing can be done about light pollution. For example Germany has a law about light pollution, and it shows on this map. It less polluted than its neighbours, although it has higher population density and urbanization level.
- Naac 6y agoWhat is the law? What are people legally required to do?
- dheera 6y agoMost light pollution laws limit outdoor lighting fixtures and require them to only emit downwards and not upwards.
- wongarsu 6y agoProbably the most noticable change in recent years is the replacement of mercury-vapor streetlights with the yellow-orange sodium-vapor lights, or with orangish LEDs (although some use blueish LEDs that are not that great for light pollution). In terms of actual legal requirements, Bavaria prohibits sky beams/searchlights directed upwards, and the illumination of facades of public buildings between 11pm and morning.
- terramex 6y agoWhile switching to LEDs can improve naked eye view of night sky, it sometimes negatively impact amateur astrophotography as mercury and especially sodium lamps have narrow emission spectrum and it can be filtered off using optical bandpass filters. LEDs light have much wider spectrum and cannot be filtered off.
- acwan93 6y agoSan Jose, California does this for the Lick Observatory at Mt. Hamilton, although I think they're switching to blueish LEDs. The sodium-vapor lights are frequently mistaken as yellow traffic lights though, in my experience.
- jagged-chisel 6y agoIs this not just a population map? https://m.xkcd.com/1138/ https://m.xkcd.com/1138/
- cheeaun 6y agoQuestion, how is the gradient heatmap thing implemented?
- jonah-archive 6y agoThis is a bit tangential, but should be a pretty good aurora over North America tomorrow (Sat Apr 24) night -- visible on the horizon as far south as Salem, OR to Annapolis, MD: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast (forecast is for the UTC day, so the prior overnight for NA)
- slowhand09 6y agoI live in Annapolis. I can't determine from the link how to tell if its projected to be visible there.
- jakear 6y agoNeat! Any idea where on the Oregon coast would be the best place to watch? Hard to tell specifics from that map.
- jakear 6y agoAnswered my own question with the power of macOS preview. So the center of the outer band lies at around Newport, then continues to just south of Bend. Cross referencing with the dark sky map, your best bet on the coast is probably around Roosevelt Beach, though the Oregon Dunes and Dismal Swamp general area also holds promise (I have no idea how far out of the band you can be while still seeing it, they list Salem as a good viewing spot, which is much further north than the band)
- jakear 6y agoOops, update again: I called up the research institute and they informed me that the outer band is actually the line past which you cannot see the aurora, so in fact anywhere north of Newport should be good, the northernmore the better
- slowhand09 6y agoI live in Maryland. I can't determine from the link how to tell if its projected to be visible there.
- ransom1538 6y agoI can still smell the diesel oil cars of Madrid. Are diesel cars super popular in EU?
- titzer 6y agoI am grateful for this map. I used it to scout out Mojave desert as a place to do some stargazing. I was surprised that Las Vegas is still very clearly visible on the horizon, despite this being a very dark "hole" in the map. You gotta go really far out to get dark skies all the way to the horizon.
- dheera 6y agoIf you don't require dark skies for 360 degrees, you can get away with going to a place that has dark sky in the direction of whatever you're trying to observe. I've done a lot of deep sky photography within an hour of the Bay Area by being mindful of this.
- dgemm 6y agoMost of this seems pretty explainable except for the offshore spots near South Korea, both east of Busan and near Jeju. Fishing related?
- anonymfus 6y agoI like this. I think it would be also useful to add isolines for brightness of various astronomical objects to the map. I want to easily understand where I need to go to see Milky Way for example.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gfrangakis 6y agoWhat is this random spot with seemingly nothing around it in Russia? https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.85&lat=68.2729&lon=83.2696&layers=0BFFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.85&lat=68.2729&lo...
- aportnoy 6y agoAPG flaring of the Vankor field? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vankor_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vankor_Field
- ebertx 6y agoThere are a lot of strange spots in Russia. I was looking at a spot south of the Pechora Sea on the light pollution map, then comparing it with Google Maps/Earth. I can't see anything that would correlate with that much light. https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=6.17&lat=67.1945&lon=56.3945&layers=0BFFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=6.17&lat=67.1945&lo...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dmrotar 6y agoResources like this (and as others have mentioned, Dark Site Finder) are very useful for astrophotography, especially for a hobbyist like myself. Many don't realize how relatively close they live to areas with great nighttime viewing conditions. For example, upstate New York has some great viewing locations, so even if you live in NYC it's an easy weekend trip. Here's a shot I took of the Milky Way taken from such a site (one of the darker spots in the map): https://www.lumathon.com/photo/_qTYviEhy/Colors-of-the-Milky-Way https://www.lumathon.com/photo/_qTYviEhy/Colors-of-the-Milky... Edit: a few more of my other shots of the night sky for anyone interested, various locations, all of which were scouted using a light pollution map like the one posted -- https://www.lumathon.com/dan/photos/tag/stars https://www.lumathon.com/dan/photos/tag/stars
- cpach 6y agoGreat shot!
- dheera 6y agoI do a lot of deep sky landscape photography (https://instagram.com/dheeranet/ https://instagram.com/dheeranet/) and dark skies are essential to that. Most of these are taken from pretty dark spots on the map in California. Especially essential is planning for dark skies in the direction of whatever it is you are trying to shoot, which is in some cases arguably slightly more important than the dark sky level of where you are standing. If a galaxy rises over a city, it's going to be hard to image even if you're far from the city. One of the tools I use the most is an app called "PlanIt Pro", which gives you pretty much all the info you need, including being able to show where in the sky various astronomical objects are, their magnitude, a VR simulation of them with the 3D topo map, and lots of other things. It also has a light pollution map built-in, and can show you the position of the Milky Way. I plan many of my shots with it. There's a free version and I can't remember which features are omitted from that but it's been worth every penny for me.
- agogdog 6y agoMany (like myself) also don't realize how far away they live from areas with great nighttime viewing conditions (a 3-4 hour drive for me). :(
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sparker72678 6y agoStill dreaming that someday we regard light pollution as the pollutant that it really is, though tbh I have little hope. 99% of the people I talk to about this basically wish we could replicate daytime levels of light all around the clock. They want even brighter streetlights, even more lights around the outside of their homes, etc.
- bob1029 6y agoI wish we would also do the same thing with low frequency sound.
- baltimore 6y agoThis place in Kazakhstan is lit! https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.62&lat=48.7573&lon=56.4363 https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.62&lat=48.7573&lo...
- afterburner 6y agoCheck out this spot in northern Siberia: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.58&lat=67.9757&lon=84.3369&layers=B0FFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=5.58&lat=67.9757&lo...
- iguessthislldo 6y agoI was drawn to that same spot because it was big but there's no city there on the map. I opened google map to see what was there and found this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vankor+manufacturing+site/@67.8026005,83.5182673,7566m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x44a7c54bec97f1e5:0x8da955b4d0f347f8!8m2!3d67.8065705!4d83.5529995 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vankor+manufacturing+site/... Seems to be an oil field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vankor_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vankor_Field Also didn't google it as much, but it looks like oil fields in Texas give off plenty of light as well: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=9.14&lat=28.6928&lon=-98.5407&layers=B0FFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=9.14&lat=28.6928&lo...
- shuntress 6y agoI was looking at this same spot. People have uploaded some great pictures from there[0]! [0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vankor+manufacturing+site/@67.806579,83.5536382,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipPa3fvC5dYVeF1usR7BsCNuOogmd58qYG547Uuj!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPa3fvC5dYVeF1usR7BsCNuOogmd58qYG547Uuj%3Dw203-h114-k-no!7i2560!8i1440!4m7!3m6!1s0x44a7c54bec97f1e5:0x8da955b4d0f347f8!8m2!3d67.8065705!4d83.5529995!14m1!1BCgIgAQ https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vankor+manufacturing+site/...
- baltimore 6y agoOil field or something? https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B014'12.6%22N+57%C2%B021'04.7%22E/@48.2440419,57.323393,6679m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d48.23682!4d57.35131 https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B014'12.6%22N+57%C2%...
- davidbrent 6y agoI love this sort of thing, but like many heatmaps, I wish it had a color blind toggle.
- holoduke 6y agoIt's probably similar to a map showing where most rich people are living.
- gibspaulding 6y agoI was thinking that too, and was fully expecting the top comment to be a joke about heat maps that are actually population maps, but it turns out there are some interesting insights I wouldn't have expected. Namely that there are substantial differences when comparing areas with light pollution legislation with similar unregulated areas; also interesting to see how much light pollution there is even at sea!
- monocasa 6y agoThe map around Denver seems questionable. Same falloff in the plains to the east as in the high mountains directly to the west doesn't match my experiences.
- Black101 6y agoWow I am surprised that Atlanta has so much light... This map appears to be pretty close to this image: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/712129main_8247975848_88635d38a1_o.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/712129main_8...
- 2iP1zbR 6y agoi remember a long time ago i was told north korea was a dark spot on earth when viewed from space, interesting to see it on an actual light pollution map. not that north korea is alone in this aspect.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- airstrike 6y agoVery interesting to contrast developed nations with developing ones, as usual. From this map, Brazil looks like a great country to stargaze from.
- abhayhegde 6y agoThis has been a very useful website. I observed that the more "developed" a place is, more the population and inevitably a lot of light pollution. I wonder how to reduce light pollution while not bargaining with the safety at night.
- giantg2 6y agoGive everyone night vision?
- wishinghand 6y agoI'm really surprised how polluted some parts of the USA are, like North Dakota. I would have figured there'd not be much there.
- holub008 6y agoI was surprised by North Dakota as well. I believe that bright spot corresponds to oil fields. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation
- datagram 6y agoApparently it's due to fracking. Here's an article I found about it: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a-mysterious-patch-of-light-shows-up-in-the-north-dakota-dark https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...
- bondolo 6y agoIt was interesting to see that the timeline accurately reflects the changeover from sodium vapor to LED street lighting in my community. Still too much light, but better.
- jumaro 6y agoI really like that site. Have used it multiple times to find dark spots for photographing the milky way. However, I don't understand why the default overlay is from 2015, when there is newer data available. First thing I usually do is switching to the most recent overlay.
- unbalancedevh 6y agoThis is kind of depressing. I'm looking for a piece of land where I can get away from light pollution, and this is telling me that there is no such place anywhere near me, even out in the "countryside."
- xattt 6y agoThe eastern end of Prince Edward Island (Canada) comes pretty darn close to this darkness. Even though it’s sparsely populated, it’s a place that doesn’t feel isolated because of social capital.
- foobiekr 6y agoSame. I would like to move to somewhere with low light pollution but isn't far from good medical care. Impossible, at least in the US.
- s0rce 6y agoDepends how far you want to be but an hour outside of Reno, NV. gets you pretty dark either on a mountain or a remote basin.
- agys 6y agoWe proposed – as a counter-point to the many “light-festivals” – a festival of darkness: all the lights of the city would be off for one night. It didn’t get trough, unfortunately.
- ryandrake 6y agoIt would be really great if this and other kinds of geospatial data were more open and easily mashed-up. Let's say I wanted to find a nice tract of land to buy (Zillow), which has good hiking trails (AllTrails), low light pollution for stargazing (lightpollutonmap.info), and maybe a dirt airstrip (vfrmaps) to fly into. Currently, I have to have four browser windows open with each site. There's no way to mash this data up easily without reaching for the dev tools and hoping each site provides raw data. Wouldn't it be better if everyone made data accessibility a priority rather than just packaging it up for each site's very narrow use case?
- betwixthewires 6y agoYou can create OSM sqlite files and use them in OSM. It requires some knowledge of GIS but it can be done if you can get the raw data. I'd like to turn this light pollution into an OSM overlay, also vfrmaps seems pretty interesting too.
- LegitShady 6y agoIf the sites offer downloads or can be scraped in spatial formats you can use QGIS (free and open source) although you may need to learn some of the basics of gis like a bit about datums and projections. qgis.org It is exactly for these kinds of spatial analyses that these tools exist. Dev tools might work but this is an existing field with advanced tools you won't code yourself any time soon.
- s0rce 6y agoWhat about the Gunn valley in BC. Not sure if the airstrip is still there.
- supernova87a 6y agoI'm curious to know when the growing number satellites passing through your sky become a bigger problem than the light pollution? Although, it is a qualitatively different kind of "noise" -- sparkly bright dots that fly through the dark sky periodically, versus a glow that permeates the whole sky.
- rorykoehler 6y agoI find it fascinating that this also works as a wealth map
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- intrasight 6y agoI didn't realize that the Susquehannock State Park was such a dark place.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIs it a rendering artifact or something, that the left half of the United States is entirely darker than the right half? Like a line was drawn down the middle.
- Zircom 6y agoNope, just that the western US is less densely populated than the eastern side of the country and that is directly reflected in the amount of light pollution.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIn a straight line right down the middle? I wonder if its political, weather-related or what.
- lolinder 6y agoNope, if you look at a population density map it has the same line. I'm not at all sure why that's true, geographically.
- mahogany 6y agoI think that's roughly the beginning of the Great Plains. I would guess the population density drops significantly because of farmland and ranching.
- lolinder 6y agoYeah, that seems right, but it's bizarre how straight up-and-down it is. I can see why GP thought that it looked artificial.
- davidcuddeback 6y agoNo. https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0249398/800wm/C0249398-USA_at_night,_satellite_image.jpg https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0249398/800wm/C0249398...
- 6y ago
- davidw 6y agoBehold, SE Oregon: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.67&lat=43.0350&lon=-118.8623&layers=B0FFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.67&lat=43.0350&lo... One of the best places in the country for dark, clear skies.
- rootusrootus 6y agoI'd like to get out there sometime. Even class 2 is really good for me, so we drive one once or twice a year and camp at brooks memorial state park north of goldendale. Easy to reach, has amenities nearby, still very dark. It has a good convenience/dark ratio for people coming from Portland.
- s0rce 6y agoLove it out there. Nice open spaces and sagebrush.
- jFriedensreich 6y agoi totally get that we should save energy and make areas great for astronomers as well as give insects and birds plenty room to not be disturbed by light. BUT living in a german city is just depressing at night. you can barely see at a lot of places and its just inconvenient to walk, also everything possible is closed, there are no big 24h shops (like asda or geant, i dont mean spätshops for snacks) or anything urban or exciting i would expect in a modern city.also a lot of places have these dim and yellow orange depressing lights instead of more daylight like modern leds. can someone explain how this is a good thing?
- geenew 6y agoNeat to see the historical data in the VIIRS maps. The area around Uttar Pradesh / Bihar really seems to have developed a lot in the past 8 years, for example. I’d love to see an animation of this.
- korethr 6y agoIs it just me, or does his look quite a lot like a population density heat-map? XKCD 1138[1] comes to mind. For those persons concerned solely about light polution, this is definitely useful. But another thing I think would be interesting is this map, corrected for population density. Mentioned down thread is that different localities have different rules affecting lighting, and that this can be seen in the map. Correcting this map for population density would probably show that even more. 1. https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- oliwarner 6y agoWhat's the deal with Belgium? It's lit up like a stadium.
- Dries007 6y agoWe had a legal requirement for street lamps everywhere until a few years ago.
- bb88 6y agoSo it occurs to me that this map and other light pollution maps are estimated, not measured. The town I live in is in a valley. Go north past the mountains and it gets very dark quickly. In fact, the light is blocked significantly that I don't have to go very far to get to a dark sky.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoI think it's taken from satellite at low resolution and then extrapolated. Because it doesn't correlate with population completely so there must be some measurements somewhere.
- technothrasher 6y agoI took my boy to Botswana a couple years ago, coming from the bright red on that map of the East Coast of the US. The first night I told him to look up, and it was so much fun watching his mind get blown by what he saw.
- malwarebytess 6y agoUntil the invention of the electric light every night humanity communed with the stars. There's no part of human mythology or history that hasn't been influenced by a human being looking at the night sky. We have excised this from human experience and it is a fundamental mistake. Human beings evolved with the night sky and it is criminal that we no longer have the connection.
- dawnerd 6y agoThe stretch between Yreka and Redding gets pretty dark. Kinda creepy some nights when you're the only person on I-5.
- throwaway823882 6y agoAnyone have similar links for sounds? National Park Service sound maps: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/soundmap.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/soundmap.htm National Transportation Noise Map: https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/
- betwixthewires 6y agoI need to download this overlay to import to osmand
- Mertax 6y agoI question the accuracy of this when 19.41869, -92.06075 supposedly has enormous light pollution. What would be the cause of this?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThe oil wells in North Dakota are rivaling all the major US metros.
- cbkeller 6y agoWhat is fascinating to me about this is the regions including [1] in North Dakota or [2] in northern Russia (~300 km southwest of Norilsk) that have incredibly large and bright zones of light pollution -- more than many large cities -- almost entirely disconnected from population, apparently as a result of temporary natural gas extraction infrastructure. The pollution at [1] is larger/brighter than Denver, and [2] is about equivalent to Moscow! [1] https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.67&lat=47.9667&lon=-103.0474&layers=B0FFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.67&lat=47.9667&lo... [2] https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.43&lat=67.7473&lon=83.8603&layers=B0FFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFF https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=7.43&lat=67.7473&lo...
- pcurve 6y agoWhy is there so much light pollution in the middle of ocean, south east coast of South Korea?
- bamboozled 6y agoJust a theory, commercial fishing, especially for squid uses flood lights to attract squid to the surface?
- 3dee 6y agoIn the Netherlands a lot of light polution is caused by greenhouses. Now I am wondering: does something like a foil exists that keeps light in the greenhouse while letting sunlight pass through?
- GekkePrutser 6y agoYeah the Westland is super bright as expected. I also wish they'd find a better way. All that light going out isn't going into the plants.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ahthat 6y agoWhat the heck is going on in western North Dakota?
- SergeAx 6y agoWhat's the deal with the Gulf of Guinea? Night fishing at scale?