May 2025: Mother Snowy Owl, Light Pollution News.

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This Episode:

Join us today as we talk about some dark sky messaging fails, why salmon need you to switch the lights off, and…oh hey…streetlights with headdresses – what the!

This month, I welcome conservationist Michael Calhoun, garden landscaper Phyllis Gricus, and from the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr. Robert Massey!

Host:

Guests:

With a lifelong private and public passion for the cosmos, Robert is part of the global campaign to avoid a world where satellites and light pollution ruin our shared heritage of an unsullied night sky. He represents the Society on the executive board of the Earth Space Sustainability Initiative, in the policy hubs of the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference, and in the UK delegation focus group for the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
In 2019 he co-authored Moon: Art, Science, Culture with the art historian Alexandra Loske, and is the resident guest on the RAS Supermassive podcast, consistently one of the most popular in the world for astronomy.

Full Article List:

1. Nissan Skyline with Over 40,000 LED Lights – Guinness World Records, Guinness World Records.
2. As a lamp you wear a hat, Stefan Oberwalleney, RBB24.
3. City of Freeport to upgrade street lights in hopes of reducing crime, Reanne Weil, MyStateLine.com.
4. Alice PD’s “Light Up the Community” initiative, KRIS 6.
5. Battle Ground City Council reviews dark sky lighting technology, Norman Helgason, The Reflector.
6. Can Enhanced Street Lighting Improve Public Safety at Scale?, SSRN.
7. Night time could get darker in Wales as Welsh Government issues guidance to dim the lights, Owen Hughes, North Wales Live.
8. Reduced Light Pollution Initiatives – A Light-Dimming Project in Canberra Reduces Pollution (TrendHunter.com), Colin Smith, Cleanthesky.com.
9. Ypsilanti considers dark sky ordinance to limit light pollution, Fox2 Detroit.
10. At least two homicide sites’ without street lights, prompting safety concerns, ABC7.
11. Protecting the Night Sky, Scott Laird, Vernonia’s Voice.
12. Lighting arrangements that work for you and your neighbors!, Apple Valley.
13. From fireflies to fish, light pollution is damaging the environment – what can we do about it?, Emma Charlton, World Economic Forum.
14. This trend for lighting up gardens may seem an inviting one, but it needs to be done with care, Joanne Hunt, The Irish Times.
15. How young salmon navigate a gauntlet of danger en route to the sea, Science Daily.
16. Impacts of Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) on coastal ecosystems: A study on the herbivore <i>Ampithoe valida</i> with focus on sex-dependent responses, Marine Pollution Bulletin.
17. SH1 lights to be changed to protect town’s birds, David Hill, RNZ.
18. A Home That Strives To Be Out of This World, Miss Cellania, Neatorama.com.

Light Pollution News: May Highlights

Record-Breaking LED Car & Creative Streetlight Solutions

Tonight, we kick things off with a jaw-dropping, record-breaking car! Who among us wouldn’t want a vehicle decked out with 43,860 LED lights? UK resident Alix Wilding holds the Guinness World Record for the most lights on a vehicle, though this glowing masterpiece isn’t road legal. Why? Not because of brightness, but because the rear windshield is completely covered in LED lights.

Streetlights That Wear Hats?

In Berlin’s Brunnenviertel district, artist Alona Rodeh tackled decorative streetlight pollution with an innovative solution—she gave streetlights hats. These spherical lights resemble human heads, so Rodeh adorned them with caps. Some sport bucket hats, others have ballcaps wrapped to resemble long hair, and yes, some even have Darth Vader helmets!

City Lighting News Summary Across the U.S.

• Freeport, LA & Alice, TX aim to upgrade to LED streetlights to curb crime.
• Battle Ground City, WA is debating the cost of dark sky-compliant retrofits for acorn-style fixtures.
• Philadelphia, PA released a pre-release study on LED conversions, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania—detailing crime reduction from LED streetlights.
• In Washington, DC, Downtown Cluster of Congregations leader Terry Lynch is advocating for every streetlight to stay lit, despite violent crime rates dropping by 27%.

Lighting Controversy in Michigan

Over in Ypsilanti, Michigan, confusion reigns over a new outdoor lighting policy. A Fox 2 Detroit report suggests the city plans to turn off streetlights to reduce sky glow, but the real story is more complex.

Neighborhood-Friendly Lighting Tips

In Apple Valley, MN, officials urge residents to be considerate with exterior lighting by:

• Shielding fixtures to prevent glare
• Aiming lights away from neighboring properties
• Using motion sensors to limit unnecessary brightness

Garden Lighting: A Bright Idea or a Problem?

A report from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) advises against illuminating ponds, hedges, or trees. Floodlighting disrupts wildlife, discouraging frogs from nesting and affecting birds and insects. Instead, RHS suggests solar lamps for a subtle glow.

Dark Sky Advocacy & Artificial Light Impact on Wildlife

The World Economic Forum recently highlighted research on artificial light’s effects on the environment and human health.

Meanwhile, studies show that artificial light impacts wildlife migration:

• Chinook salmon struggle with low survival rates due to climate change, water conditions, and artificial light at night, which extends predator hunting hours.
• Ampithoe valida, a common Atlantic amphipod, responds differently to artificial light based on gender—males eat more, while females eat less under constant brightness.

Kaikoura, New Zealand’s Dark Sky Sanctuary Efforts

The town of Kaikoura in New Zealand is taking steps to reduce light pollution to protect the endangered Hutton’s shearwater. Switching from sodium lights to LED fixtures, they are working toward a Dark Sky Sanctuary designation.

Astronomer’s Dream Home for Sale

In Big Bear City, CA, a $485K off-grid home is up for grabs—complete with a full observatory featuring a 16-inch Meade telescope! This 2-bed, 2-bath property includes an antenna farm for ham radio, a lathe-equipped workshop, and sits under Bortle 4 skies—perfect for stargazing.

Light Pollution News: May Read Along

Let’s kick things off tonight with this record-holding car! Who here amongst us wants a car with 43,860 LED lights glued to the exterior?

UK resident, Alix Wilding, installed those lights and won the Guinness Book of World Records apparent record for most lights on a vehicle. The vehicle, I should note, is not road legal. That’s not because of how bright it is, but rather b/c the whole rear windshield is covered in LED lights.

How about this for your neighborhood streetlights? You at home know how much I disdain the ignorance embodied in a lighting first, shielding maybe policy that so many municipalities seem to implement. Well, in the Brunnenviertel district of Berlin, an artist named Alona Rodeh found a pretty neat solution to some decorative street light pollution.

That is, to have the lights wear hats.

To paint the picture for you at home, these are spherical streetlights that stand up from a cylindrical stem, so they’re not all that conceptually different from a person’s head. So Rodeh did what she thought was the next logical step – by adding decorative caps to them.

Some lights wear bucket hats, some wear ballcaps with a wrapping to resemble long hair. And they each, apparently, have names like ‘the Girl Next Door’ or the ‘Boom Boom’….or in your case, Phyllis, the ‘Gardener!’ And she even has a prototype of the Darth Vader helmet…because why not!

That was a fun one. Elsewhere, to summarize streetlights this month, Freeport, LA, and Alice, TX want to upgrade to LEDs to apparently irradicate and irradiate criminals, and Battle Ground City, WA is weighing its ability to afford dark sky compliant lighting retrofits – namely for acorn style lighting. On the crime front, there is a pre-release of the Philadelphia LED conversion study that we spoke about in a previous episode, done by the University of Pennsylvania. You can find that in today’s show notes. 

And in DC, the Downtown Cluster of Congregations Executive Director, Terry Lynch, is on a one-man mission to make sure every street light is lit for fear of people being murdered. It should be noted that violent crimes, including murder, are down 27% in Washington, DC at the moment of Lynch’s distress. 

This all brings me in a not at all straight forward manner to the US state of Michigan…and Michael, I think you’ll find this one interesting. I’m not sure what the best way is to deliver a plan to protect the night, but Ypsilanti, Michigan’s city government has probably uncovered the absolute worst way to deliver the news.

This story comes to us from Fox 2 Detroit, which built a news report solely out of the ‘turning the light off’ narrative bumbled out of the messaging of Ypsilanti’s city government.  In fact, if you head over to our website and click on this clip, you’ll be hard pressed not to think that the city wants to turn off all of the lights to reduce sky glow.

As is typically the case with local tv news coverage, at first glance it appears looks like next to no research went into making the piece – rather Fox 2 found a council member who couldn’t articulate the plan worth a damn – and then, in true local TV fashion, dug up the most expressive person they could find to showcase fear about a rampant and unstoppable wave of criminal activity should this plan go into effect. So let me articulate the issue.

Council member Patrick McClean stumbled his way to hints of what the plan actually is.  Ypsilanti sits on the Detroit side of Ann Arbor. You’ll recall that Ann Arbor put through some new street lighting in the last few months that dealt a split result to dark sky advocates. While the city nailed the lighting temperature at 2700K, the new lights chosen are quite bright if wattage is any indicator.

Now, Ypsilanti is not Ann Arbor, but it was a very early adopter of LEDs, dating back over 10 years now. I searched around and wasn’t able to find the current temperature in place, but judging from what I’ve seen online, they’re probably in the 4000-3000K range.

On the neighborhood front, here’s some common sense that I think everyone here can get behind. The community of Apple Valley, MN’s code enforcement team issued an article to encourage neighbors to be…well, neighborly with their exterior lighting.

Included in the article are tips on how to avoid conflicts with your neighbors, such as by shielding your lighting when possible, aim the lights away from neighboring properties and streets, and consider utilizing motion detectors.

Here’s one for you, Phyllis, from the Irish Times, Joanne Hunt cites some information about proper garden lighting from the British gardening charity, the Royal Horticultural Society.

When lighting up landscapes, the RHS recommends against lighting ponds, hedges, or trees.  And when it comes to choosing lights, the society recommends the “dull glow” of a solar lamp over dedicated, high powered flood lighting that you’ll often see on commercial installations.

The RHS claims that lighting pond areas can deter frogs from nesting, create problems for nesting birds and insects.

All of this comes on the coattails of a recent flavor of the month campaign by the NGO, the World Economic Forum. The organization published an article summarizing much of the current state of research on how dedicated and persistent artificial light at night imparts changes in our environment and affects human health.

Since we’re here, there’s some ecology news we can hit. On the aquatic front, the University of Colorado at Boulder detailed the dangers Chinook salmon deal with when navigating to the Pacific Ocean.  The fish only have a 5% survival rate from birth to ocean. Part of this is due to climate change – think “warm water temperatures, dams, water quality issues, human introduced predators – including largemouth and striped bass.”

The team tracked 424 salmon via riverbank monitoring. They also tracked 23 striped and 17 largemouth bass.  Researchers found that salmon do the bulk of their migration at night. This is because they prefer to save energy by riding strong mid-river currents, the same currents that daytime predators, such as bass, hang out in, looking for salmon. 

Shocker for regular listeners of the show, I know – ambient lighting apparently plays into reducing the success of the nighttime migration because these daytime predators take advantage of artificial light at night to extend their hunting hours. It’s suggested that communities near these waterways attempt to limit the direct or indirect light shining onto the waterways to better promote salmon success.

In another study via the Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers looked at the herbivore Ampithoe valida, an amphipod common to the Atlantic Ocean. If you’re not familiar with amphipods, as I wasn’t, these are small crustacean invertebrates that look a bit like shrimp. These amphipods were found to react differently under artificial light at night depending on their sex.

Males increased their feeding habits under artificial light, while females, perhaps experiencing a circadian rhythm driven disruption, reduced their nighttime food consumption. It should be noted that in the control without light, the situation was reversed. Whereby the females ate more food than the males at night.

We can close out the ecology news on a good note. A first stab at responsible lighting goes into effect in the town of Kaikoura on the South Island of New Zealand. Last year, Kaikoura submitted an application to Dark Sky International to become a Dark Sky Sanctuary. The area spans roughly 2k km of land and was spurred by an effort to further protect the endangered Hutton’s shearwater.

The shearwater, which has been heavily impacted by artificial light at night, will now have an added boost in switching out of sodium lighting to new LEDs. I could not find any mention of the color temperature to be put in place or if the lights will utilize proper shielding…which, by any cognizant, fully functional human mind, should be a must.

Now, Robert, I don’t want you feeling left out of this show. Let’s close today out with a home that is figuratively out of this world.

Out in Big Bear City, CA, about an hour from San Bernardino, sits perhaps the world’s foremost bachelor pad for the nerdy. While it’s listed as a 2 bed / 2 bath home, in actuality it’s a giant man cave equipped with a full on observatory that includes a 16” Meade telescope. There’s a control room to run the telescope out of, an extensive antenna farm for ham radio operation, and a fully outfitted workshop that includes a lathe.

Think this place is out of your price range? Think again? It’s listed at $485k and sits in a Bortle 4 sky. According to Zillow, the house is completely off the grid.