Light Pollution

Here in Tucson there often is talk about light pollution at night. People seem to take their star gazing seriously and want to minimize the ambient light. In our housing development we have only dim lights on at night. There are noticeably fewer street lights compared to Seattle. I really don't mind since I enjoy looking at the sky at night. In Seattle a change in lighting wouldn't matter because the skies are so cloudy that star gazing isn't possible much of the time. I also appreciate the way that the newspaper has columns on what to look for in the skies at night. There are even guided walks at night to look at stars and nocturnal animals.

I just finished reading a book called The Sherlockian. It is a clever historical fiction that gave me a glimpse of life in the early 1900's in London. One of the points made was that the conversion from gaslights to electric lights made a huge impact on visibility on the streets. I suppose Londoners couldn't do much star gazing even with the dimmer gaslights so the brighter lights would be welcomed. Not so in Tucson!