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October 2024: Stargazing on the Bomber!, Light Pollution News.

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I came across an article in Newsweek which I doubt any of you saw. 

Apparently, a 17 year old by the name of Rudy Siggs, captured the North American Nebula – for which Newsweek astutely decided to capitalize into a click bait. Siggs became a Reddit darling for this shot.

It’s not the first time Newsweek has featured astrophotography. In 2022, they featured Brennan Gilmore’s shot of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Staying on the topic of some truly inspiring nighttime shots! – friend of the show, and past guest, Josh Dury was featured in CBS News for one of the most stunning images of the Perseid meteor shower that I’ve ever seen!

For you at home, the image, a composition, has the Milky Way’s spine cutting down through the center, directly overtop of Stone Henge. Meteors bow outward from the Milky Way as they rain down to the ground.

Boy, Nico, astrophotography has sure come a very long way in a very short amount of time! I’m not sure what kind of phone you use, but check out this new upgrade for Google Pixel users.

Starting in the Google Camera 9.5.118 update, pixel users will now be able to manually set the “Astro” mode.  The upgrade allows the phone’s users to shoot on demand wide field milky way shots at user determined settings. Previously, this functionality was automated within the hardware, but now it appears that the user can manually make the switch – directing up to 4 minute exposures – which as I’m gathering from the news stories on this that the software must be doing some type of live stacking in those 4 minutes – whereby the software might reject poor quality images to only stack the most optimal into a brilliant milky way shot!

For you at home who may not be aware, the Astronomical League is an association of astronomy hobbyist clubs that kind of acts like a Scout council for all things astronomy related. One of the services that they provide is a merit based observing list system which allows amateur astronomers and casual star watchers to find all of the unique and interesting objects that arise at night. Full disclosure – as of this recording I am a representative within the AL –  and, full disclosure,  I’m not entirely sure what that entails.

However, I opine not to plug the AL but rather to set up the next couple of stories. I recently started down a path to learn about obscure constellations via one of these observing lists – which includes multi-cultural constellations.

Krystal De Napoli, an Australian astrophysicist, found refuge in the stars when her mother, an Aboriginal woman, unexpectedly passed. De Napoli now believes that under the persistence of light pollution, something as bright, and as well known, as the Pleiades, may become covered by sky glow. An asterism for which she and her mother shared a mother-daughter connection.

Separately, half way around the world Brad Tucker in the Conversation rehashes the history of light pollution. Starting in 1917, the French astronomer Guillaume Bigourdan mentioned seeing the summer Milky Way in Paris. Thereafter, nighttime quickly began to fade from human consciousness.

To this point, there was a very astute comment by Leigh Ann Henion in the American Scholar that tees us up. During the Victorian times, Henion alludes that the darkness of night was not seen as “the other” rather “it was [the] endless [24-7] light that was foreign.”

And that endless light can really travel. Tucker estimates that the sky glow from Sydney can extend upwards of 280 miles away! But who cares?

Well, De Napoli, for one, and it’s not just because she’s an astrophysicist. The sky represents a collection of histories for all of society – even though many of us in the west have long since given up on reading them. And, more importantly for where I began this little anecdotal story – those are often histories hidden in the confines of constellations.

And it’s not just the lit avenues of the stars that form humanity’s connection to the sky – but those dark regions made up of gas and dust in between. Here, aboriginal constellations such as the kangaroo, emu…a snake, and crocodiles reside.

On that note, a group of researchers, perhaps unsurprisingly, found that if you live under light pollution, you will be less likely to cultivate an interest or appreciation of the universe or astronomy. The overall narrative is nice, but it’s a bit simplistic. For instance, Maine ranked positively for low light pollution but inspired next to no one. And the deep south generally ranked poorly for light pollution and also inspired next to no one, unless that is, you live in Tennessee or Florida.

Before we leave this set of articles, I want to circle back to Tucker real fast. Apparently, Australia’s Capital city, Canberra, has implemented a light pollution reduction scheme.

Canberra, after recently installing adjustable brightness LED lighting through the company Omexom, has actually reduced its light pollution footprint by 30%. This comes from research work that Tucker and others have observed in a forthcoming paper. The city has been dimming street lights to 50% of their total brightness throughout the night.

Tucker’s future paper also estimates that there’s a positive correlation of a 5% reduction in light pollution for every 10% reduction in streetlight brightness.

This is all great but Brad Tucker may not want to tell any of this to Sky News host, Caleb Bond, who, in what can only be described as his best Tucker Carlson impersonation, torches a UK town for turning off some street lights due to the rising cost of energy. We see such type of fear, if not conveyed as it was in this case to demonize individuals, but more commonly extolled by individuals who are simply uncomfortable with night.  

How about this very interesting story.

As humanity prepares for its first major extraterrestrial leap to the Moon – one company is intent on creating what they call the ‘Swiss army knife’ of arch lights. While we may need shelter, water, power, and all the trappings of survivability in a ruthlessly hostile environment, DARPA has awarded Honeybee Robotics with funding to prototype the taller than the ‘Statute of Liberty’ sized street lights on the moon under a project called ‘Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Bearing for Energy Redistribution – a lengthy mouthful that feels forced, but arrives at a rather fun shortened acronym, project “LUNARSABER.”

This light tower isn’t just to provide additional light into craters or light for the 14 Earth day long lunar night, the height of the tower allows it to continue to collect energy longer thereby serving as a charging resource, wifi network, and much more.

In other news around street lights, light pollution advocates were dealt a slight set back up in Michigan. It looks like Ann Arbor will be completing its LED street light conversions with a focus on high intensity lighting.  The city has selected to use 58 watt lights – which when pictured in one news article shined down on the road, the sidewalk, two trees, and the front of a house. The good news is that it looks like the city nailed the temperature at 2700.

Prior to this, a group of residents asked the city to install much lower wattage (29 watt) LEDs which would effectively cut the lumen level in half – from upwards of 7000 lumens to about 3000 lumens.