Losing the Dark Sky

Its a big problem and really has some dire consequences on the health of us and our planet. But fortunately, with LED technology getting more and more prevalent, and affordable, the style of lights has been changing to the "downlight" styles they talked about. You'll notice, on newer buildings especially, the lights for the parking areas, or flood lights on the buildings, tend to shoot the light almost straight down, instead of flooding outward perpendicular to the walls of the building. This is helping to tackle this problem. Sadly its because people want to save money on the power bills, but at least its helping with the dark sky problem too.

A lot of these lights also feature the ability to include motion sensors to dim the lights to nearly off levels when no one is around, or remote controlled dimming, but sadly not a lot of people are opting to pay for this add-on feature yet. Hopefully one day regular businesses will get on board with this... Its already pretty easy to integrate with their building management systems...


Cities, which pay hundreds of thousands or millions per month for power bills, are slowly switching to LED technology as well, and many are participating in studies looking at dimming street lighting later in the night when 100% brightness is not needed. Saves money, makes the light fixtures last a lot longer, and significantly reduces the light pollution.

If you haven't been to a dark sky spot before (I camped in the Mont-Mégantic Dark Sky Preserve a couple years ago), they are amazing. Did some star gazing through their massive telescope. You don't know what you're missing!