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October 2024: See the Stars, Share the Stars!, Light Pollution News.

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Guests:

Starting off the second of the show, I have this warm up story for you all.

This really isn’t a story per se but I want to use the way-back machine and dial it back to 12 months ago, when you, Nico, suggested some ideas for space themed pumpkin carvings. I’m curious as to what pumpkins everyone might be planning for this upcoming October.

We had two interesting pieces of astro-tech that rolled through the news this month – the first was an advertised night vision binocular for nighttime birding, which admittedly would be really neat during this time of year – migration season – and the other was this Celestron Origin. It sports a 6” mirror and apparently has a relatively noisy motor. And also has a weight of 41lbs.

Here’s a feel good story – In Greece, a high rise that was initially constructed during the dictatorship era of the early 1970s has received new life.  The 24 story tall Piraeus Tower in Athens stands out as the second tallest building in Greece.

The building itself housed limited occupants on its lower floors but largely remained unfinished…until 2023. The building has a wavey appearance due to the angles of its louver, which partly act to reduce the building’s heat absorption. What makes this tower even more interesting is that the architects deliberately attempted to minimize the tower’s overall light pollution impact.   

Some good news for bird lovers out there. The lights on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis were once again turned off during the month of September. As you at home may be aware, St. Louis sits in the path of what’s termed the ‘Mississippi Flyway’ – a high density north-south migration path for migratory birds. 

Why this matters is detailed in new research in the journal PLOS One where the team looked at the patterns of survival and release history for upwards of 3100 building collision victims. In terms of light pollution, there are two takeaways from this article.

First, fall migrants suffered the highest number of collisions.

Second, these researchers grimly contest the apparently conservative estimate of one billion US bird kills by collision each year, believing that number to be higher due to delayed mortality, among other reasons.

But wait, we’re not out of the bird news just yet! How do you feel about throwing birds?

Well due to the effects of light pollution, folks in Iceland are doing just that to baby pufflings! Each year, new pufflings hatch eager to take flight into the world. However, puffins utilize moonlight as guidance at night.

You can see where I’m going with this – left untouched, light pollution of nearby towns will lure the puffins inland where predators may find them easy pickings! So to combat this, a group of volunteers donned some gloves and helped guide the birds on a seaward path.

Since I have at least one notable photographer on today’s show, I wanted to talk a little about this article. It comes to us from Robyn Ross over at Texas Monthly – whereby a biologist named Curtis Eckerman uses light traps to inventory and photograph moth populations. Specifically, Eckerman uses a portable ultraviolet light (which of course he switches off once the inventory is completed). The article itself is loaded with great information regarding moths – I highly recommend you at home take a second to read it. In the meantime – Eckerman’s data collection falls right into this age of citizen science that includes birders utilizing phone apps such as Merlin, astrophotographers combining forces to collect and analyze deep sky phenomena (say planetary nebulas) with professional astronomers (as our past guest Drew Evans continues to do), and in Eckerman’s case, a thorough undertaking of ecological health with the assistance of the phone app iNaturalist.

Two notes specifically as it pertains to light pollution here – first, as we have been made aware of this year, artificial light serves to disorient the orienteering mechanism of moths. However, here’s something that I was not aware of, artificial light can also lure moths to lay eggs under that light source, as opposed to nesting on a plant, thereby reducing the viability of the larvae.

What if exposure to artificial light shrunk your brain? Well, researchers in an article published in Biology Letters found that artificial light at night did just that…but for spiders! Scientists at this time aren’t sure what’s driving the change beyond their exposure to a 24-7 daytime environment. This preliminary study used micro-ct scans to assess brain size. 

Also in the world of spiders, a study from Acta Oecologica found that artificial light at night affected the abundance of cobwebs, web density, and the body size of the Joro-spider, a colorful web building spider in Tokyo.

It turns out that under artificial light at night, the spiders spun more webs but kept them smaller in areas with artificial light at night. The body sizes of the spiders did not change under artificial light. Another case of a predator leveraging the gravitational pull of artificial light at night on its prey.

I thought this was pretty cool – when doing my news pull this month, I came across this piece. Researchers this month identified a new photoluminescence on the feet of the Mexican free-tailed bat when put under ultraviolet light.

There’s a new study looking to assess the impact of light pollution on the fish larvae food source, the Brachionus plicatillis rotifer. Specifically, it looked to see how light affected the rotifer based on its food source. Two food sources were studied – the first included the algae Chlorella which inhibited growth of the rotifer under white light. Conversely, the other food source, Phaeocystis, another algae, experienced positive growth with white light. Overall, white and red light increased the propagation of the rotifer while also decreasing its lifespan. One thing to note, food quality appears to have an effect on the rotifer’s ability to overcome the negative effects of artificial light at night.

And finally, rounding out our ecological news this month, field crickets appear to be affected by artificial light at night. In a study in Behavioral Ecology, artificial light at night dealt crickets a double whammy. First, crickets had to limit some activity pertaining to their nutritional investment in immunity, encapsulation, and reproduction. Second, female crickets then had to manage trade offs between nutritional immunity and reproduction.

Moving over to health news a study looking at results from 276 students between the ages of 16 – 22 years old, utilizing self reporting of nighttime light exposure, physical examinations (weight, blood sampling, etc.), and the use of a wrist worn accelerometer. The study found that artificial light at night exposure increased inflammation of cardiovascular inflammation markers. It should be noted that this inflammation was more pronounced in females than males and that two hours of vigorous physical activity can help counter the effects of inflammation caused by artificial light at night – activities include cycling, running, etc.

In a tiny study that used the data of 20 participants, researchers attempted to gauge the impact of night shift work (ie light levels for nurses) over 20 weeks by looking at salivary melatonin and personal light levels from personal light measurement devices. The study found no significant association between working the night shift to impacting melatonin levels for these night shift nurses. I will note that this study comes to us via the journal Society of Light and Lighting, which is a part of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. One of the leading researchers working with CISBE is Dr. Mariana Figueiro, who is credited in this paper. The CISBE released a 2020 position paper where they intended to critically examine and refute many circadian health claims under a critical assessment of study methodologies.

Now this story helps lead us to some research which while I’ll be mentioning, should be looked at loosely given their reliance on utilizing satellite imagery and trying to pair correlations between satellite observations and health observations. I’ll note that at least two of our past guests have cautioned against gleaming too much from this type of research.

First up, from Environmental Research, a study looked at how light pollution affected mental health issues including depression and anxiety. The findings of the study, which looked at self reporting by 4,068 Bulgarian adults, found that there is some type of correlation between outdoor light pollution and mental health ailments.

Next, again pairing satellite imagery to, this time, 9,752 Barcelonians, it was found that there was an association with elevated risks of heart and metabolism health issues.

Then, we have this study from Frontiers in Neuroscience that tried to associate artificial light (based on satellite imagery) with Alzheimer’s disease. Their results associate outdoor nighttime light with a strong association to Alzheimer’s disease, beating out other potential drivers including “alcohol abuse, kidney disease, depression, heart failure, and obesity.”

We have a few more items to cover tonight, and here’s a really good one. Have you heard of the SHINE program? Those of you in the know might be aware of it but maybe you at home weren’t.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham created a new campus SHINE program. Campus SHINE at UAB is being run by assistant professor in Astronomy, Dr. Michelle Wooten. It’s a collegiate initiative set out by the American Astronomical Society to bring awareness to light pollution.

SHINE hopes to promote the deliberate and smart use of lighting. The program works by educating students on how their campus can mitigate their energy costs, promote healthy circadian rhythms, live lives without glare, and…well.. make it so people can actually see the stars.

Designations for this month – let’s cheer on Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area as Colorado keeps on racking up the Dark Sky places – in this case, we welcome Gunnison as a Dark Sky Park!

Then we also have the Isle of Rum all the way up in Scottland – The Isle of Rum becomes the first Dark Sky Sanctuary in the country and is Scotland’s fifth designated Dark Sky place!

Let’s finish up with a little astrotourism news!

Astrotourism is in! According to the Guardian, there has been a surge in inquiries regarding “cottages, campsites, and hotels.”  The growing trend of starry sky experiences includes participants looking to simply find relaxation and inspiration, a man who wanted to propose to his girlfriend, to UFO enthusiasts who take in a bit of mysticism.

And apparently, driven by that latter piece, there are a number of communities adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park that are attempting to cash in on UFOs under dark skies.

Here’s an interesting quote by a couple who operate the Adicted2Wonder Joshua Tree tours – featuring constellation storytelling and UFO experiences – “… what everybody is ultimately trying to come to this area to do is to find something to believe in, something that gives them peace and solace in a crazy world.”