Outdoor LED lighting projects can save energy, but they can also make light pollution worse.
Written by Shel Evergreen. Published by MIT Technology Review Aug. 16, 2022.
Print publication appears in September/October 2022 edition of magazine.
Late one evening in June of 2016, John Barentine stood alone at Mather Point, an iconic and rarely empty overlook at Grand Canyon National Park. The moon slid away, leaving the darkness of a crisp, clear sky. The stars that make up our galaxy seemed to align overhead. The inky chasm of the ancient canyon spread out below, and he marveled at a feeling of being unmoored in time and space.
An astronomer who worked for the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), Barentine had a special reason to revel in the scene. With his help, the park had recently been given provisional status as an International Dark Sky Park, a designation given to public land that exhibits “exceptional” starry nights. Few publicly accessible places on Earth experience this kind of pristine darkness. Indeed, the view is quite different 200 miles away in Tucson. There, photons from the city’s lights scatter in the sky, forming an obscuring dome of light called sky glow—a feature now common to major cities.
Scientists have known for years that such light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife...
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