9 ms·

Greenhouses here in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been devastating to the night sky. It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky

Greenhouses here in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been devastating to the night sky. It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. I've taken friends out to thoroughly mediocre skies (Bortle 4-5) and they've been very impressed, because they're used to city lights (Bortle 9) where you can maybe see a few of the brightest stars and planets. If you've never seen truly dark skies, do yourself a favour and go see what they look like during true night. Bring binoculars if you have them, maybe get a planisphere and a (dim!) red flashlight. The lack of respect for the night sky includes starlink and the other internet providers dumping tens of thousands of satellites in orbit instead of building municipal internet, by the way. It's been a huge hit to the field of astronomy. Before someone inevitably says "we should just be putting telescopes in orbit", orbital observatories are obviously a huge deal and I support building more of them, but you simply can't put things like the ELT (40m primary mirror, 2800 tonnes) or the Square Kilometre Array in space.

bpodgursky 2mo ago
Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.
- magicalist 2mo ago
  > instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food. Not an expert, but I would think greenhouse light pollution is not necessary for agriculture? It seems like obvious waste (money spent generating light that isn't going to photosynthesis), but I assume it's cheaper not to shield the lights than to shield them, so it's a matter of ROI and requiring people take care of their externalities. Is there an economic argument that light shields will make agriculture in that area too expensive?
  - bpodgursky 2mo ago
    I mean it's not easy to have greenhouse walls that let sunlight in but don't let grow light out. You can direct the light but you are going to have loss.
    - wizzwizz4 2mo ago
      Sunlight and grow light generally happen at different times.
    - rrr_oh_man 2mo ago
      Yeah, let's not inconvenience companies. (FYI, it's a solved problem: https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-Poly-Tunnel-100-Blackout-Automatic-Light-Deprivation-Greenhouse-for-Canada-USA_uorghoynhg.html https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-P...)
- drdexebtjl 2mo ago
  The entire world’s agriculture “shut down” at night before we decided we want every crop to be available everywhere year-round. Just install light shields.
  - bpodgursky 2mo ago
    Yes we also had a population of 50 million and 10% of them starved to death every time a volcano burped, they were great times.
    - ToucanLoucan 2mo ago
      And 9 million starve to death annually because it isn't profitable to feed them, what's your point?
      - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
        The point is that we don't need to increase 0.11% back to 10%. Specially when the base numbers have significantly increased.
- uv-depression 2mo ago
  I can't just casually hop up to the Yukon for an evening of astronomy. It's about a thirty hour drive. Even relatively small towns have exurbs now because of our terrible city planning, so light pollution extends shockingly far. Alberta's probably the worst, almost the entire province (about the same land area as Texas) has light pollution. > instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food. The Okanagan will be shocked to hear they can't do agriculture! Perhaps we could just turn off the greenhouse lights for a couple hours, or install retractable shields/mirorrs on top of the greenhouses.
  - bpodgursky 2mo ago
    What are you on about? Literally drive north a bit towards Whistler, you can get out of the light pollution in an hour or two lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=8.01&lat=49.6027&lon=-122.7672&state=eyJiYXNlbWFwIjoiTGF5ZXJCaW5nUm9hZCIsIm92ZXJsYXkiOiJzYl8yMDI1Iiwib3ZlcmxheWNvbG9yIjpmYWxzZSwib3ZlcmxheW9wYWNpdHkiOiI2MCIsImZlYXR1cmVzb3BhY2l0eSI6Ijg1In0=
    - uv-depression 2mo ago
      Have you never been there? This light pollution map wildly underestimates light pollution outside of cities. I can tell you from experience you're not getting nearly 22 mpsas skies anywhere near Pemberton.
- eliaspro 2mo ago
  This is not only about being able to see a nice night sky (although I admit I love seeing one), it's a very much more fundamental issue. Light pollution has dramatic negative consequences for wildlife and thereby our ecosystem we so heavily depend upon.
  - bpodgursky 2mo ago
    Yes it has negative consequences for wildlife, which is why it is FAR BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT to put all the agriculture in one place at high efficiency rather than spread farmland out over otherwise virgin wilderness. Would you rather have 2x the wilderness 80% degraded or 1x the wilderness 90% degraded? Unless your plan is to decide who starves to death, it's far better to have greenhouses where we already have farms!
    - eliaspro 2mo ago
      OK, looks like I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Therefore I fully agree with you!
    - drdexebtjl 2mo ago
      Stop with the false dichotomies. I would rather have no wilderness 90% degraded at all. There are better alternatives than spreading out the farmland. Like better greenhouses that don’t blast grow lights all over the night sky. We have the technology, it’s just cheaper to destroy the environment.
- micromacrofoot 2mo ago
  or you know, just adjust the lights a little
- curioussam 2mo ago
  [flagged]
throwforfeds 2mo ago
I hadn't been out to a dark sky in years so I went out to a deep part of Joshua Tree (Bortle 2-3) one night not too long ago just to see some stars. Wow, I was not expecting that many Starlinks up there.
- kccqzy 2mo ago
  National parks in California are indeed amazing. One time during a group trip to Death Valley, people were so amazed by the night sky that half decided to sleep outside the tents just to experience falling asleep while looking at the stars.
  - Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - msie 2mo ago
      Really?
      - Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
        Yes, really. Narcissistic people act out little plays for themselves and others, like op here "sleeping under the stars"..., it's a performance they are putting on for themselves and social media.
  - RetroTechie 2mo ago
    > people were so amazed by the night sky that half decided to sleep outside the tents just to experience falling asleep while looking at the stars. Where I live, it usually impossible due to nights being too cold (okay, you can use sleeping bags/extra blankets etc), clouds, or... mosquitos. But when/where it's not: highly recommended! "Spaceship Earth" in progress.
everdrive 2mo ago
>It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. But what if someone were uncomfortable briefly? Did you ever consider that? Technology exists to infantilize us while slowly ruining everything that makes us human. Shame on you for attempting to interrupt human progress.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
adrianN 2mo ago
Putting astronomy on the dark side of the moon would probably work better than putting it into space because you can use some local material for construction.
- uv-depression 2mo ago
  There isn't a single "dark side" of the moon that's always in darkness, the "dark side" of the moon is the side that always faces away from us (poor choice of name). It's fully illuminated during a new moon. Lunar regolith would probably be quite damaging to optics. It's nasty stuff. I have seen ideas for building liquid mirror telescopes on the moon, though.
  - toast0 2mo ago
    Of course the dark side of the moon is illuminated by the sun at times. But it has minimal human illumination, so that's pretty nice.
    - dylan604 2mo ago
      human illumination is nothing compared to the giant fusion reactor that would be lighting it up for 2 weeks at a time. At least on terra firma, you can view the sky nightly.
      - HappMacDonald 2mo ago
        Er.. on the moon you can also view the sky nightly. It's just that both the days and the nights are a lot longer.
- shagie 2mo ago
  The far side of the moon would be useful for a radio observatory where one can block the noisy Earth while taking advantage of the ability to construct large collection area dishes (think Arecibo in a crater - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope ) As to the dark side of the moon, I would suggest a read of the story "A Walk in the Sun" - https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671878522/0671878522___1.htm https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671878522/0671878522___1.htm (the dusk terminator moves at about 10 mph (15 kph) at the equator).
kortilla 2mo ago
> other internet providers dumping tens of thousands of satellites in orbit instead of building municipal internet Ah yes, that municipal internet in the Pacific Ocean. The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. The municipal internet to mountain villages. The municipal internet running to airplanes. The municipal internet to the Antarctic research stations. Tell me you don’t know the point of satellite internet without telling me. If you want to make arguments against sat constellations so people can make long exposure photos, go for it. But don’t pretend there are actual viable alternatives to LEO sat internet.
- wussboy 2mo ago
  Maybe it's okay for there to be places on the earth where high sped internet is not available?
  - kortilla 2mo ago
    Always easy to say as the person with internet on the internet where the people stuck in those locations can’t speak. Maybe it’s okay for you to not have internet.
- drdexebtjl 2mo ago
  > The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. Yet that person can receive mail, is within a few miles of a major highway, and is likely connected to or close to the electric grid. Infrastructure is expensive. LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for.
  - kortilla 2mo ago
    It’s cheap to deliver mail and even then many of those places don’t get mail to their home. It’s to a shared mailbox. > LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for. Terrestrial wireless and wired had decades to do something and failed. Trenching fiber for 30km is insanely expensive and requires tons of time to get easements to do it. Also, it’s a pretty old trope to say “X only works when cost Y I’ve invented and not even quantified is not imposed”. If you want to make the argument that Starlink should pay for something, do that. Otherwise it’s meaningless crap that can be used to argue against literally anything.
micromacrofoot 2mo ago
Humans have been looking at the stars every night for tens of thousands of years and we've essentially occluded the night sky to most in the matter of about 50 years, I don't even think most people know what we've lost anymore.
Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
It's not that big a deal for MOST people. I was on navy ships transiting the Pacific it's as dark as it can get on deck and sure, it's magical and spectacular (especially the NUMBER OF SHOOTING STARS!) but even in the middle of the ocean 99% of my fellow sailors could not have given less of a shit. I'd sit out there for hours and they all though I was a weirdo for it. So, while amazing, most people don't understand or care to understand the enormity of what's going on around them. Most people didn't care about dark skys in the first place and still don't.
- bilekas 2mo ago
  Had s similar experience in the saharah desert.. I love all things space and have a teleclscooe I use regularly but seeing it in person and just laying down and watching for hours was another experience. I would argue that probably not looking up all the time at night with predators around was an evolutionary trait though! (Semi joking)
- chickensong 2mo ago
  There are a lot of Muggles in the world.
- dfxm12 2mo ago
  Depends how far back we go for "first place". Stars are an interesting intersection of social sciences, hard sciences, and even some woo for a very long time. We must consider their interaction between religion, astronomy and astrology going as far back at least as history lets us.
- retired 2mo ago
  In parts of The Netherlands is simple never gets dark due to light pollution. It feels like it is always dawn. Pretty bad for your sleep cycle. Some pictures: https://milieufederatie.nl/nieuws/6-op-de-10-nederlanders-willen-het-donker-terug-lichtvervuiling-verstoort-nachtdieren-en-onze-gezondheid-2/ https://milieufederatie.nl/nieuws/6-op-de-10-nederlanders-wi...
- pdpi 2mo ago
  > Most people didn't care about dark skys in the first place and still don't. Most people were never given the opportunity to care.
doix 2mo ago
Today I learned about the Bortle scale. I was completely ignorant about it. > If you've never seen truly dark skies, do yourself a favour and go see what they look like during true night I think I went from only ever experiencing Bortle 5-6 to Bortle 1 when I visited Merzouga and Erg Chebbi. Blew my mind, made me really appreciate the extent of light pollution almost everywhere else I've been.
- pdpi 2mo ago
  > Today I learned about the Bortle scale When I first learned about the "clouds are noticeably brighter than the sky" part of Bortle 5, it was like it flipped a switch in my brain. I can't avoid noticing it now.
wompawoo 2mo ago
Check out southwestern Ontario as well. I've driven through there on my way to Michigan a couple times. It's purple at night. The sky is purple.
SoftTalker 2mo ago
I would have assumed that most plants need a daily light/dark cycle but maybe not?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2mo ago
  The world record holder vegetables are all grown in Alaskan summers, up north... where they get 20+ hours of daylight per day. Dunno, maybe the CAM plants would do bad (pineapples) but just about everything else benefits.
- tredre3 2mo ago
  Most fruit crops need 8-12 hours of darkness but it changes depending on which point they're at in their life cycle. 20 hours of light is usually fine during the initial stages, then they require 8-10 hours of darkness to bloom, then back to 18-20 hours of light during the fruit growth. (I'm not a botanist or a farmer but I grow greenhouse veggies for fun)
qurren 2mo ago
Starlink gets a lot of flax for it but as an avid night sky photographer myself (IG: @dheeranet) who regularly goes to Bortle 1 parts of the world, I haven't found them to be an issue at all. 1. They are only visible when they are spinning up to orbit 2. They are too dim to desensitize your eyes, and are extremely easy to remove with the most basic of outlier rejection techniques; netizens often amplifiy outliers by max-stacking instead of outlier-rejected mean-stacking to make Starlink look much worse than it is 3. Lights from planes have ALWAYS been much, much, much, much worse than satellites. They still aren't particularly a problem for imaging if you know how to outlier reject, and their paths are known, predictable and trackable I'm not an Elon-fan or anything but just giving a dose of objective reality here. Not to detract from TFA's real issue which is light pollution from cities -- that's an actual issue as the regions of dark sky are shrinking.
- uv-depression 2mo ago
  (1) Considering there are now multiple companies planning to launch their own fleets of tens of thousands, satellites need replacing, etc, even if this was completely accurate, this will be a continuous and ongoing issue as it has been for years. (2) The standards for astrophotography and for professional astronomical measurements are somewhat different! Also, I think you meant median stacking; mean stacking doesn't handle outliers as well. (3) Whataboutism. Besides, you'd get no argument from me about replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail, even without considering lights. I agree that city light pollution is probably the bigger problem, especially for the amateur/cultural angle, but these are two symptoms of the general cause of our economic system not valuing the sky (or the environment generally).
  - qurren 2mo ago
    Some good points. However: > replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail I absolutely LOVE high speed rail, but I will note that it is correlated with far more light pollution than air traffic. I say correlated because typically high speed rail is routed through high-density population centers, but if there aren't population centers, you'll have to have plans to create them in order to support the rail system itself. Basically there is nowhere in the world that has both high speed rail AND suitable for astronomy. If you want to find dark skies in China for example you have to get far away from all the high speed rail areas of the country.
matkoniecz 2mo ago
> instead of building municipal internet Starlink is intended and used as solution for places and uses for which municipal internet is not an option at all (is it usable at all as replacement for municipal internet? I would guess that you would overcrowd connection quite quickly)
Reason077 2mo ago
Wanaka, in the South Island of New Zealand, still has pretty good views of the night sky. You can see an awful lot more stars than you can from major cities. But even here it’s under threat: a recent new retail development on the edge of the town (called “Three Parks”) emits so much light that it illuminates the nearby hills at night. The sad thing is that much of this light seems unnecessary to me: eg a hardware / garden retailer has enormous floodlights to illuminate their inner courtyard constantly at night, even when they’re closed. The rest of the town has always been pretty good at minimising light pollution, with soft, modest and well designed street lighting in residential areas. But such considerations have been forgotten completely with the new development. Three Parks emits more light pollution than the rest of the town combined!
anal_reactor 2mo ago
Are there places in EU that are dark and easy to visit?
- yodsanklai 2mo ago
  In the EU, the canary islands are known to have great skies. You check this map https://www.lightpollutionmap.info https://www.lightpollutionmap.info I've been in some place with very dark skies, like Death Valley or Teide in the Canaries (https://www.teidebynight.com/tenerifes-dark-sky-reserves-havens-for-star-gazers/ https://www.teidebynight.com/tenerifes-dark-sky-reserves-hav...). It was great, but also not that much better than what I've seen closer to home in French countryside or in the alps. Maybe I didn't get the best conditions though.
yodsanklai 2mo ago
> It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, Considering how little value we put on far more important things (like the climate or biodiversity), I'm not really surprised.

bpodgursky 2mo ago

Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.

magicalist 2mo ago
> instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food. Not an expert, but I would think greenhouse light pollution is not necessary for agriculture? It seems like obvious waste (money spent generating light that isn't going to photosynthesis), but I assume it's cheaper not to shield the lights than to shield them, so it's a matter of ROI and requiring people take care of their externalities. Is there an economic argument that light shields will make agriculture in that area too expensive?
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  I mean it's not easy to have greenhouse walls that let sunlight in but don't let grow light out. You can direct the light but you are going to have loss.
  - wizzwizz4 2mo ago
    Sunlight and grow light generally happen at different times.
  - rrr_oh_man 2mo ago
    Yeah, let's not inconvenience companies. (FYI, it's a solved problem: https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-Poly-Tunnel-100-Blackout-Automatic-Light-Deprivation-Greenhouse-for-Canada-USA_uorghoynhg.html https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-P...)
drdexebtjl 2mo ago
The entire world’s agriculture “shut down” at night before we decided we want every crop to be available everywhere year-round. Just install light shields.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  Yes we also had a population of 50 million and 10% of them starved to death every time a volcano burped, they were great times.
  - ToucanLoucan 2mo ago
    And 9 million starve to death annually because it isn't profitable to feed them, what's your point?
    - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
      The point is that we don't need to increase 0.11% back to 10%. Specially when the base numbers have significantly increased.
uv-depression 2mo ago
I can't just casually hop up to the Yukon for an evening of astronomy. It's about a thirty hour drive. Even relatively small towns have exurbs now because of our terrible city planning, so light pollution extends shockingly far. Alberta's probably the worst, almost the entire province (about the same land area as Texas) has light pollution. > instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food. The Okanagan will be shocked to hear they can't do agriculture! Perhaps we could just turn off the greenhouse lights for a couple hours, or install retractable shields/mirorrs on top of the greenhouses.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  What are you on about? Literally drive north a bit towards Whistler, you can get out of the light pollution in an hour or two lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=8.01&lat=49.6027&lon=-122.7672&state=eyJiYXNlbWFwIjoiTGF5ZXJCaW5nUm9hZCIsIm92ZXJsYXkiOiJzYl8yMDI1Iiwib3ZlcmxheWNvbG9yIjpmYWxzZSwib3ZlcmxheW9wYWNpdHkiOiI2MCIsImZlYXR1cmVzb3BhY2l0eSI6Ijg1In0=
  - uv-depression 2mo ago
    Have you never been there? This light pollution map wildly underestimates light pollution outside of cities. I can tell you from experience you're not getting nearly 22 mpsas skies anywhere near Pemberton.
eliaspro 2mo ago
This is not only about being able to see a nice night sky (although I admit I love seeing one), it's a very much more fundamental issue. Light pollution has dramatic negative consequences for wildlife and thereby our ecosystem we so heavily depend upon.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  Yes it has negative consequences for wildlife, which is why it is FAR BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT to put all the agriculture in one place at high efficiency rather than spread farmland out over otherwise virgin wilderness. Would you rather have 2x the wilderness 80% degraded or 1x the wilderness 90% degraded? Unless your plan is to decide who starves to death, it's far better to have greenhouses where we already have farms!
  - eliaspro 2mo ago
    OK, looks like I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Therefore I fully agree with you!
  - drdexebtjl 2mo ago
    Stop with the false dichotomies. I would rather have no wilderness 90% degraded at all. There are better alternatives than spreading out the farmland. Like better greenhouses that don’t blast grow lights all over the night sky. We have the technology, it’s just cheaper to destroy the environment.
micromacrofoot 2mo ago
or you know, just adjust the lights a little
curioussam 2mo ago
[flagged]

throwforfeds 2mo ago

I hadn't been out to a dark sky in years so I went out to a deep part of Joshua Tree (Bortle 2-3) one night not too long ago just to see some stars. Wow, I was not expecting that many Starlinks up there.

kccqzy 2mo ago
National parks in California are indeed amazing. One time during a group trip to Death Valley, people were so amazed by the night sky that half decided to sleep outside the tents just to experience falling asleep while looking at the stars.
- Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - msie 2mo ago
    Really?
    - Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
      Yes, really. Narcissistic people act out little plays for themselves and others, like op here "sleeping under the stars"..., it's a performance they are putting on for themselves and social media.
- RetroTechie 2mo ago
  > people were so amazed by the night sky that half decided to sleep outside the tents just to experience falling asleep while looking at the stars. Where I live, it usually impossible due to nights being too cold (okay, you can use sleeping bags/extra blankets etc), clouds, or... mosquitos. But when/where it's not: highly recommended! "Spaceship Earth" in progress.

everdrive 2mo ago

>It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, something that's been an important part of every human culture for longer than recorded history. But what if someone were uncomfortable briefly? Did you ever consider that? Technology exists to infantilize us while slowly ruining everything that makes us human. Shame on you for attempting to interrupt human progress.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

adrianN 2mo ago

Putting astronomy on the dark side of the moon would probably work better than putting it into space because you can use some local material for construction.

uv-depression 2mo ago
There isn't a single "dark side" of the moon that's always in darkness, the "dark side" of the moon is the side that always faces away from us (poor choice of name). It's fully illuminated during a new moon. Lunar regolith would probably be quite damaging to optics. It's nasty stuff. I have seen ideas for building liquid mirror telescopes on the moon, though.
- toast0 2mo ago
  Of course the dark side of the moon is illuminated by the sun at times. But it has minimal human illumination, so that's pretty nice.
  - dylan604 2mo ago
    human illumination is nothing compared to the giant fusion reactor that would be lighting it up for 2 weeks at a time. At least on terra firma, you can view the sky nightly.
    - HappMacDonald 2mo ago
      Er.. on the moon you can also view the sky nightly. It's just that both the days and the nights are a lot longer.
shagie 2mo ago
The far side of the moon would be useful for a radio observatory where one can block the noisy Earth while taking advantage of the ability to construct large collection area dishes (think Arecibo in a crater - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope ) As to the dark side of the moon, I would suggest a read of the story "A Walk in the Sun" - https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671878522/0671878522___1.htm https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671878522/0671878522___1.htm (the dusk terminator moves at about 10 mph (15 kph) at the equator).

kortilla 2mo ago

> other internet providers dumping tens of thousands of satellites in orbit instead of building municipal internet Ah yes, that municipal internet in the Pacific Ocean. The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. The municipal internet to mountain villages. The municipal internet running to airplanes. The municipal internet to the Antarctic research stations. Tell me you don’t know the point of satellite internet without telling me. If you want to make arguments against sat constellations so people can make long exposure photos, go for it. But don’t pretend there are actual viable alternatives to LEO sat internet.

wussboy 2mo ago
Maybe it's okay for there to be places on the earth where high sped internet is not available?
- kortilla 2mo ago
  Always easy to say as the person with internet on the internet where the people stuck in those locations can’t speak. Maybe it’s okay for you to not have internet.
drdexebtjl 2mo ago
> The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. Yet that person can receive mail, is within a few miles of a major highway, and is likely connected to or close to the electric grid. Infrastructure is expensive. LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for.
- kortilla 2mo ago
  It’s cheap to deliver mail and even then many of those places don’t get mail to their home. It’s to a shared mailbox. > LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for. Terrestrial wireless and wired had decades to do something and failed. Trenching fiber for 30km is insanely expensive and requires tons of time to get easements to do it. Also, it’s a pretty old trope to say “X only works when cost Y I’ve invented and not even quantified is not imposed”. If you want to make the argument that Starlink should pay for something, do that. Otherwise it’s meaningless crap that can be used to argue against literally anything.

micromacrofoot 2mo ago

Humans have been looking at the stars every night for tens of thousands of years and we've essentially occluded the night sky to most in the matter of about 50 years, I don't even think most people know what we've lost anymore.

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago

It's not that big a deal for MOST people. I was on navy ships transiting the Pacific it's as dark as it can get on deck and sure, it's magical and spectacular (especially the NUMBER OF SHOOTING STARS!) but even in the middle of the ocean 99% of my fellow sailors could not have given less of a shit. I'd sit out there for hours and they all though I was a weirdo for it. So, while amazing, most people don't understand or care to understand the enormity of what's going on around them. Most people didn't care about dark skys in the first place and still don't.

bilekas 2mo ago
Had s similar experience in the saharah desert.. I love all things space and have a teleclscooe I use regularly but seeing it in person and just laying down and watching for hours was another experience. I would argue that probably not looking up all the time at night with predators around was an evolutionary trait though! (Semi joking)
chickensong 2mo ago
There are a lot of Muggles in the world.
dfxm12 2mo ago
Depends how far back we go for "first place". Stars are an interesting intersection of social sciences, hard sciences, and even some woo for a very long time. We must consider their interaction between religion, astronomy and astrology going as far back at least as history lets us.
retired 2mo ago
In parts of The Netherlands is simple never gets dark due to light pollution. It feels like it is always dawn. Pretty bad for your sleep cycle. Some pictures: https://milieufederatie.nl/nieuws/6-op-de-10-nederlanders-willen-het-donker-terug-lichtvervuiling-verstoort-nachtdieren-en-onze-gezondheid-2/ https://milieufederatie.nl/nieuws/6-op-de-10-nederlanders-wi...
pdpi 2mo ago
> Most people didn't care about dark skys in the first place and still don't. Most people were never given the opportunity to care.

doix 2mo ago

Today I learned about the Bortle scale. I was completely ignorant about it. > If you've never seen truly dark skies, do yourself a favour and go see what they look like during true night I think I went from only ever experiencing Bortle 5-6 to Bortle 1 when I visited Merzouga and Erg Chebbi. Blew my mind, made me really appreciate the extent of light pollution almost everywhere else I've been.

pdpi 2mo ago
> Today I learned about the Bortle scale When I first learned about the "clouds are noticeably brighter than the sky" part of Bortle 5, it was like it flipped a switch in my brain. I can't avoid noticing it now.

wompawoo 2mo ago

Check out southwestern Ontario as well. I've driven through there on my way to Michigan a couple times. It's purple at night. The sky is purple.

SoftTalker 2mo ago

I would have assumed that most plants need a daily light/dark cycle but maybe not?

NoMoreNicksLeft 2mo ago
The world record holder vegetables are all grown in Alaskan summers, up north... where they get 20+ hours of daylight per day. Dunno, maybe the CAM plants would do bad (pineapples) but just about everything else benefits.
tredre3 2mo ago
Most fruit crops need 8-12 hours of darkness but it changes depending on which point they're at in their life cycle. 20 hours of light is usually fine during the initial stages, then they require 8-10 hours of darkness to bloom, then back to 18-20 hours of light during the fruit growth. (I'm not a botanist or a farmer but I grow greenhouse veggies for fun)

qurren 2mo ago

Starlink gets a lot of flax for it but as an avid night sky photographer myself (IG: @dheeranet) who regularly goes to Bortle 1 parts of the world, I haven't found them to be an issue at all. 1. They are only visible when they are spinning up to orbit 2. They are too dim to desensitize your eyes, and are extremely easy to remove with the most basic of outlier rejection techniques; netizens often amplifiy outliers by max-stacking instead of outlier-rejected mean-stacking to make Starlink look much worse than it is 3. Lights from planes have ALWAYS been much, much, much, much worse than satellites. They still aren't particularly a problem for imaging if you know how to outlier reject, and their paths are known, predictable and trackable I'm not an Elon-fan or anything but just giving a dose of objective reality here. Not to detract from TFA's real issue which is light pollution from cities -- that's an actual issue as the regions of dark sky are shrinking.

uv-depression 2mo ago
(1) Considering there are now multiple companies planning to launch their own fleets of tens of thousands, satellites need replacing, etc, even if this was completely accurate, this will be a continuous and ongoing issue as it has been for years. (2) The standards for astrophotography and for professional astronomical measurements are somewhat different! Also, I think you meant median stacking; mean stacking doesn't handle outliers as well. (3) Whataboutism. Besides, you'd get no argument from me about replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail, even without considering lights. I agree that city light pollution is probably the bigger problem, especially for the amateur/cultural angle, but these are two symptoms of the general cause of our economic system not valuing the sky (or the environment generally).
- qurren 2mo ago
  Some good points. However: > replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail I absolutely LOVE high speed rail, but I will note that it is correlated with far more light pollution than air traffic. I say correlated because typically high speed rail is routed through high-density population centers, but if there aren't population centers, you'll have to have plans to create them in order to support the rail system itself. Basically there is nowhere in the world that has both high speed rail AND suitable for astronomy. If you want to find dark skies in China for example you have to get far away from all the high speed rail areas of the country.

matkoniecz 2mo ago

> instead of building municipal internet Starlink is intended and used as solution for places and uses for which municipal internet is not an option at all (is it usable at all as replacement for municipal internet? I would guess that you would overcrowd connection quite quickly)

Reason077 2mo ago

Wanaka, in the South Island of New Zealand, still has pretty good views of the night sky. You can see an awful lot more stars than you can from major cities. But even here it’s under threat: a recent new retail development on the edge of the town (called “Three Parks”) emits so much light that it illuminates the nearby hills at night. The sad thing is that much of this light seems unnecessary to me: eg a hardware / garden retailer has enormous floodlights to illuminate their inner courtyard constantly at night, even when they’re closed. The rest of the town has always been pretty good at minimising light pollution, with soft, modest and well designed street lighting in residential areas. But such considerations have been forgotten completely with the new development. Three Parks emits more light pollution than the rest of the town combined!

anal_reactor 2mo ago

Are there places in EU that are dark and easy to visit?

yodsanklai 2mo ago
In the EU, the canary islands are known to have great skies. You check this map https://www.lightpollutionmap.info https://www.lightpollutionmap.info I've been in some place with very dark skies, like Death Valley or Teide in the Canaries (https://www.teidebynight.com/tenerifes-dark-sky-reserves-havens-for-star-gazers/ https://www.teidebynight.com/tenerifes-dark-sky-reserves-hav...). It was great, but also not that much better than what I've seen closer to home in French countryside or in the alps. Maybe I didn't get the best conditions though.

yodsanklai 2mo ago

> It's quite depressing how little society values the night sky, Considering how little value we put on far more important things (like the climate or biodiversity), I'm not really surprised.