Pollution By Another Name

One of the benefits of rural life is the darkness of the night heavens.  With only about half-dozen neighbors around here and many miles of distance from the street lights of a city or town the opportunity for amateur astronomy is pretty good.  Especially this time of year when the cold and dry conditions of winter creates the clearest of skies for night viewing.  There just isn't much in the way of light pollution to get in the way of viewing the night skies.

Living in America also has its advantages as the vastness of our country – relative to our friends on the other side of the pond – provides more places and spaces for excellent star-gazing opportunities.  Again, little if any light pollution.   

I just recently learned of an effort being mounted to explore and preserve the last remnants of the English night sky.  The British Astronomical Society has joined forces with The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) to launch the great Star Count of 2019. 

A 2015 study named Night Blight made use of satellite imagery to conclude that only 22 percent of England experiences night skies completely untouched by light pollution.  The numbers improve for neighboring Scotland and Wales as smaller populations mean fewer lights, less light pollution and better viewing conditions. 

Image - NASA.Gov

 

This is a rather ambitious citizen science project and astronomers have devised a novel mechanism to count the stars and crowd source the data.  The Brits are to go outside in the cold winter night and locate the constellation Orion - easily identified by its four corners and three-star belt.   

Star gazers are asked to count the number of stars viewed within the rectangle made by the four corner stars.  They can include the three stars of the belt in the count but not the four stars making the corners.     Image - NASA.Gov

When last performed in 2014 - 59 percent of the 1,000 participants observed 10 or fewer stars within the four corners; evidence of high levels of light pollution.  Under ideal conditions 4 percent of the participants viewed 30 or more stars.   

Data will be submitted via the CPRE website and the results used to assist in future campaigns to reduce light pollution.  That may include use of motion detectors, programmable LED fixtures and shielding.  More importantly it is projects like this that get people out of doors and viewing the magnificence of the heavens that has the greatest impacts. 

You can learn more about this here:  https://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/countryside/dark-skies/star-count-2019 

Raising a toast to dark winter skies....