Saturday, July 22, 2023

New Street Light Outshines the Moon


I took the garbage down to the street the other night, and when I glanced up was surprised to see a beautiful thin crescent moon!  A thin crescent is such a beautiful thing to see because of its delicacy.  It looks like such a fragile thing.  But within seconds I was really annoyed that the brand new LED street light was so much brighter than the moon, that it interfered with my comfort in looking at the moon!  It is SO BRIGHT!  And I should not be able to see the direct light from the LED from this angle - from the side.  There should be a thin band of metal below the light, called "shielding" that should prevent the light from the LED from going way out to the side.  The light needs to be concentrated DOWN toward the street.  These lights are brand new and most newly installed light fixtures are "full cutoff" meaning the light does not shine up or sideways, but just down toward the street.  I am going to the village and ask if they can install a shield, which would be a piece of aluminum sheet that hangs down maybe two inches and will shield my eyes from the light source in the fixture.  I put together a talk about light pollution to deliver to a high school astronomy class earlier this year, and so I went back and found this slide that shows how to eliminate light pollution in the sky with the use of proper shielding!  This is a wonderful illustration and I forget where I found it, and I apologize for not being able to post a credit for this nicely done artwork.




 

3 comments:

  1. Let us know how you make out with your request to the Village. We have a lot of globe lights around the complex. Thankfully, they are not LED but there is still a lot of light pollution in the area.
    Joan

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  2. I noticed the crescent moon last night after going to a local concert. It’s nice to follow the progress as it moves toward a full moon. I hope you are successful getting the Village to change the lights. Betsey

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  3. That illustration of the four different ways that lamplight radiates make me think of a certain covert operation in Big Bear (shhhhh!) to achieve example number 4!!
    -Liz

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