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This month, host Bill McGeeney is joined by Frank Turina, an astrophotographer, night sky advocate, and environmental educator with more than 15 years of working with the United States National Park Service Night Skies Program. You can learn more about his examinations of the ecological and cultural effects of light pollution from his website, at Darkskyastrophoto.
And Ken Walczak, Senior Manager of the Far Horizons program at the Adler Planetarium, Co-Author of numerous papers on design and use of innovating instrumentation for light pollution research, and co-lead in the successful designation of the world's largest Urban Night Sky Place, the Palos Preserves. Walczak is also a board member with Dark Sky International.
See Full Show Notes at LightPollutionNews.com.
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What did you think of this Episode? Text Us!
This month, host Bill McGeeney is joined by Frank Turina, an astrophotographer, night sky advocate, and environmental educator with more than 15 years of working with the United States National Park Service Night Skies Program. You can learn more about his examinations of the ecological and cultural effects of light pollution from his website, at Darkskyastrophoto.
And Ken Walczak, Senior Manager of the Far Horizons program at the Adler Planetarium, Co-Author of numerous papers on design and use of innovating instrumentation for light pollution research, and co-lead in the successful designation of the world's largest Urban Night Sky Place, the Palos Preserves. Walczak is also a board member with Dark Sky International.
See Full Show Notes at LightPollutionNews.com.
Like what we're doing? For the cost of coffee, you can become a Monthly Supporter? Your assistance will help cover server and production costs.
Light Pollution News, September 2023. Sensory Deprivation. Do we have a treat for you today? An excellent panel featuring Frank Terina and the Adler Planetarium's Ken Walczak. This month we look at Cleveland's new plan to breathe life into its downtown. Are net zero light pollution goals commendable? Darling cause now photobombing radio observatories? Is Asher Tourism good for parks? Listen to two very pertinent poems you'll not want to miss. And there's been a theft. Care to know what's gone missing. It's time for another Light Pollution News. All this and much more coming right up.
Bill McGeeney:Welcome to another Light Pollution News. I'm your host, Bill McGeaney, right back on schedule this month. We have a lot for you today. As a reminder, if you're new to listening, you can check out all of these links and more over at light pollution news dot com. We release the show monthly, so be sure to subscribe and tell your friends. If you have any comments about any of the articles or items discussed here, feel free to shoot me a email directly at bill at light pollution news dot com. Or you can even message us on Instagram over at light pollution dot news, or you can find us on LinkedIn over at light pollution news. Today, you're in luck. I have assembled a great panel of guests for you. Joining us today, we have Mr Frank Terina, a man who I'm hoping will be able to enlighten us on all of the joys and tribulations of park outreach. Frank, you've been working with the National Park Night Sky's program for over 15 years. That's almost longer than some of our listeners have been alive. What's changed over that time period?
Frank Turina:Yeah, I think probably the first thing that comes to mind is just a greater awareness of the light pollution issue. And then when I started with the park service in 2004-ish 2006, what we were doing mostly with the night cab program was more just education, explaining to park managers and the public why this was even an issue. And in the years since then that understanding and that love of the resources has grown exponentially. So I think that's the biggest change I've seen is just it's been interesting and exciting to be kind of on the ground floor of this new and growing environmental issue that people are just starting to really discover.
Bill McGeeney:Do you have a lot more knowledgeable people coming through?
Frank Turina:I retired from a park service in 2020. So I did have about 15 years of experience with them. So just what I'm talking about, my opinions and ideas that I'm expressing today are more of my own, so I'm not supposed to be teaching for the park service.
Bill McGeeney:What about only astronomy? Have you found that people who go to these programs have more knowledge?
Frank Turina:I've kind of been exposed to some incredible astronomers and night sky advocates that are really kind of doing amazing things to kind of push this movement forward and I do think that overall again, that maybe this is just part of how my community has changed, but I've just seen a growing understanding and a willingness to accept the importance of this resource and of night sky protection and astronomy in general.
Bill McGeeney:It's definitely a vanishing resource. Also, with us today is a true heavyweight and someone I've personally leaned on to get a bit of education myself, mr Ken Walzak. Ken, I'm pronouncing that, walzak, right right, you could do a wall check, wall check.
Ken Walczak:Okay.
Bill McGeeney:There we go Wall check. Hey, how about that? Welcome to the show, ken. Ken, your background has passed quite a bit, including the Far Horizons program at the Adler Planetarium over there in Chicago, and I'm curious about that, because the work you did to you actually helped create one of the largest urban night sky places. Was it the first urban night sky place over there in Chicago? We're still the world's largest. That's pretty amazing. Why don't you tell me something about that?
Ken Walczak:Yeah, so just a little bit about what I do with Adler Planetarium. We lead a project called Far Horizons and we work with students, primarily high school students, and we have a good core of volunteers adult volunteers and we do real science that we design and build instruments and experiments that we use for research, and so in every step of the process there'll be students involved. We're always looking for real world applications. It's not just the collecting the data, but it's actually doing something with it.
Ken Walczak:So back in I think 2019, I think we started we got a relationship with the Cook County Forest Preserve, so our urban night sky place is called Payless Preserves, is about 25 kilometers so outside from downtown, and it's 7,000 acres, so it's pretty large area and there's almost no light fixtures in the entire area, and so we worked with our students taking data on the conditions there, doing lighting inventories, doing all the things you need to do a proper submission to the dark sky international for a designation, and it was great work.
Ken Walczak:I mean, we're getting students out in the dark places. That one of our students even said like they got home and they told her parents about where they were and they said, really there's no lights there and their parents are like no, there's no such thing as a place without lights. They literally couldn't even. You know, they're urban dwellers, they're used to it. So it was a great opportunity to do like a living lab of the night for our students and then ended up. After two years of work we got our designation as now still the world's largest urban night sky place.
Bill McGeeney:Where the kids kind of terrified being out there at night.
Ken Walczak:You know there are a mixture of experiences like that and you know you got to be sensitive to it because you know, if you grew up in a city, you know you're always told by your parents oh, don't go down that dark street or that dark alley or whatever. You know you equate darkness with fear and this is, I think, a great opportunity to say that you know it's not. Darkness is actually just a very natural part of our world and it could be as comforting and exciting as the day.
Bill McGeeney:So for the urban night sky place, what do you have to do to maintain that designation?
Ken Walczak:Primarily is making sure that you maintain your lighting inventory, that there's no additional lighting. It's also about a lot of outreach and a lot of engagement with the public, and the area that our urban night sky place is literally surrounded by light. You know it's out in the near suburbs of Chicago and so we well, maybe I'll get into it later, but you know we're always doing experiments there at the Fort Preserve to at the Payless Preserves, to see what the conditions are like and then start looking for places that we can even start addressing light that's encroaching in on the on the area. So to maintain it's not, it's just to make sure you don't do the wrong thing, which I think we're all on board we're not putting up a 5000 K wall wall packs.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, you don't want any bright Amazon ordered floodlights. Huh yeah, outreach is pretty amazing, right? I think we can all agree on that. I know I used to do outreach here for city skies in Philadelphia, which is a program that I believe the Franklin Institute received NASA funds to help all parts of the city actually stargaze and I was impressed with over. I did this from, I think, 2011 on through right before the pandemic and then after pandemic things changed, but I was impressed with the knowledge gain of the kids over that time. In the beginning, you know they will come, the parents will come in and they they will just kind of want to see something. But as the years roll by and this is a credit to you, know all of our technology and everything the kids came super knowledgeable. I couldn't answer some of their questions and the parents kind of just looked there like wondering what's going on. It's pretty impressive. I really, really do love doing some of the outreach. I know you both do a lot for your communities, so that's great to hear.
Bill McGeeney:Let's, how about we get to it tonight? I want to start off with our policy segment, because there's a lot to discuss. We'll begin with this article from plain dealer Cleveland. With inspiration from Indianapolis, destination Cleveland plans major downtown light installation. As reported by Susan Glazer, things are about to get brighter in Cleveland, and that's not a euphemism. Utilizing projection tools, cleveland, ohio, intends to mimic the successes of Indianapolis's nighttime engagement. The city of Indianapolis leaned on grants and community businesses to provide creativity and accessibility to create lightly light shows as spandas highs the 280 foot tall soldiers and sailors Memorial in the city's monument circle. Indianapolis utilized six high lumen projectors that use a technique called projection mapping. Projection mapping turns flat surfaces building facades into three dimensional surfaces similar to experiences you may see as a Disney world. Destination Cleveland doesn't appear to have the deep pockets needed to pull off another Indianapolis, however. Instead they do plan to simply wash buildings and areas in colored light, utilize the spotlights and projectors. Things of these see outside in your neighborhood around Christmas time, just larger scale and, of course, much brighter. Destination Cleveland appears to have heard from local groups, including burders and downtown residents, whereby the organization hopes to assuage any concerns regarding unattended effects of the 24 seven lit environment. Of course, safety plays into this, but today credit destination Cleveland and Ms Glazer did not attempt to utilize fear as a tactic when making a case for the lighting plan.
Bill McGeeney:This plan appears to have near universal thumbs up from the media. Cleveland calm recently pulled their own editorial board, of whom all but one jubilantly supported the measure. The sole holdout was Lisa Garvin, who cited the effects of light pollution and referenced lingering crime issues as a potential setback for the plan. One person, tom beer, even proposed expanding the lighting to include Cleveland's very popular flats area. Curious about where else destination Cleveland garnered their inspiration? Well, look no further than our previous guest Bill Green's. Brussels and Montreal Expect to see the new lighting make its debut this April for the NCA women's final four. So when you hear stories like this, we're not talking about row aimless lighting. We're talking about artistic license. Can art be done in a way that checks all the boxes from a light pollution standpoint?
Ken Walczak:I'll jump in. I was going to say that you know, there's a place for some of these things and I think it. I'm not a I call myself not a luck site, which means I don't believe that we shouldn't have light, but I think that you know doing it right. It could be entertaining, it could draw people to an area, it could be, you know, encourage some economic, you know growth, but it just has to be really thoughtful and well balanced. If this, for example, there's something about the 24 seven, I said, or you know, or maybe doing this all throughout the year in Cleveland and that concerned me because during bird migration season they're right there on the lake area. A lot of birds migrate through that area and it doesn't take much to draw their attention. So if it's timed right and also thoughtful about the environment and ecology and all that, maybe Frank, I think you want to chime in as well.
Frank Turina:The thoughts that came to mind when I was reading this article was you know, there was an artist, I think his name was Christelle, his thing was like draping things in fabric and you know calling it art.
Frank Turina:And he, a few years back, he wanted to drape the like this pink fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado.
Frank Turina:And you know, there was some pros and cons, right, there were people on both sides of the issue, but it didn't happen because of the environmental consequences of doing that, and a big, big part of it was the environmental effects. So I think, you know, just with every, like, every other endeavor, right, and art needs to be subject to the same type of scrutiny in terms of what type of environmental impact it's going to have. And so I think that these types of light shows, granted, they are, you know, an important type of public art, but they don't exist in a vacuum, right, they have to, they have to be considered in the context of how they're going to affect neighborhoods and and the night sky and, you know, wildlife. So I think it needs to be like I said. I think there is a place for these types of types of installations, but I think they have to be done with sensitivity and in the context of the effects that they might have.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I haven't seen any of these installations in Indianapolis and I'm not sure specifically what they're referring to in Montreal and Brussels. I don't know if Montreal has such installations. I can't. I honestly didn't dig around too much on that one. But but to your point, I think that's a. That's a really good point about balancing the environmental effects of the art. I mean, who doesn't like art and who doesn't like good environment?
Ken Walczak:By the way, I was going to say that I have. I haven't actually seen what the the art installation is, or commercial installation, however they're calling it, but I've been to the that area. I'm trying to remember what's the square name again.
Bill McGeeney:Monument Square.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, Monument Square. I've been there before in Indianapolis and I've also seen it from the stratosphere. I don't know if I mentioned that to you, but one of the things we do at the Adler is we've designed a system that we fly to the stratosphere on high altitude balloons that images the earth at night, so we map light pollution and when you mention this and we've done a number of flights over Indianapolis and I actually have results from we can actually see Monument Square or whatever from the stratosphere and it's pretty bright.
Bill McGeeney:Wow, so really bright. So you've seen before and after.
Ken Walczak:That's the question. When I saw that article, it seems like they do this on certain times and occasions, right, it's not you know, like I can't guarantee whether the observations we have are from that when those lights were on, but it is. We actually I'll, I'll share, actually I'll share a image with you, or actually a gift with you, if you want, that shows our observations of that area.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, that'd be perfect I my hunch is that Monument Square is well, is very, very bright normally. That's my hunch, right. I haven't been to that part of Indianapolis but I've been to the Indian 500 those daytime. I haven't been to Indianapolis that much. Well, I swear I'm not trying to beat us up off the bat, but I do have this one that's been two years into making, which is quite astounding in its own right.
Bill McGeeney:Miami not not one to be known for its conservation of any kind Looks to be postponing but quietly okay 45 new giant LED billboards downtown and in public lands like parks, despite a wall of resistance from local residents and activists who fall hard to prevent the deterioration of their city. So, in fiscal reasons, miami hopes that the massive LED billboards can bring much needed funds into the government. However, just two weeks ago, an article came out in political Quartadito whereby LED billboard companies had spent upwards of $300,000 in campaign donations to Miami council representatives. Media and op-ed pieces appear consistently against the politicians in this one. But before I open it up, there's I. I came across this article.
Bill McGeeney:New Zealand's first dark sky park, yet, is a serious danger of losing its designation, and much of that is due to recent subdivisions and industrial growth. The continued use of 4000 Kelvin LEDs in street lighting are cited as a major cause, and in five years it took proponents to conserve the area. It appears the community maybe may have reneged on his promise to implement the Tasman environmental plan as it pertains to light retrofits. Yet recreation reserve gained its designation back in July of 2020. What to make of these?
Frank Turina:Okay. So I guess the thing that came to mind when I was reading the article about Miami was that you know it was maybe a small step in the right direction. I think that you know it showed that public opposition matters, even in the face of this political influence peddling right. So I think it's it was, it was encouraging that the outreach of the outcry from the public has at least made the council a little bit less excited. Who are about about approving this measure. So I think to me that was a little bit of an encouraging, encouraging news.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, they're fighting hard. They're the community is really fighting hard against those billboards and it's been years of making and I hope it's encouraging.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, I mean, I kind of agree with Frank this. I think, kind of what he started with beginning the show, saying like I think more people are aware now, more people are realizing that this is something to address and they should be. You know, speaking up is kind of showing its face in this. You know, and you know, I was following a story earlier this year I think it was in Baltimore. It was very similar, where they, their city approved a number of illuminated billboards and they had a similar pushback and I'm curious to see how that ended up. It might be very similar. Yeah, it's good to see. Yeah, I don't know about some of the political aspects of that story but you know, hopefully the community engagement part is is winning the day.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, bottom line people really don't want to have these. They want I mean, they want to put these in parks. That's pretty astounding in the tone, right? What about the YET? What, what? What about that piece? We have a place that had a designation and it's actually in danger of losing it. And, ken, I know you're on the board of Dark Sky International. Have you heard anything related to this piece right here?
Ken Walczak:No, actually I haven't. And it's interesting because I know New Zealand's also started an effort to possibly become an entire Dark Sky country. So it does seem sort of countered to that and I know they've they've done some really good work there in New Zealand to try to abate light pollution and this is so. This is a little bit of a surprising story. Yeah, I would, I would be interested. I don't know anything from the Dark Sky International perspective, only that you have to submit annual or bi-annual reports. So that would be one of those things where it would show up as a as a possible thing that needs to be addressed. Yeah, it'd be a really sad thing if I know how long it takes to get some of these designations approved and created, for it to be thrown away by maybe some croaching development and is really unfortunate. Let's hope it doesn't go that way.
Bill McGeeney:I mean there's two sides of the picture here. You know you have ecotourism, right, which I think astrotourism fall under, and then you have the development side, which you know, in an area that has a Dark Sky designation. I feel like there'd be more attention paid to some of these rules versus say, you know, like here here in Philly, like you know, I mean, it's just people bickering, it's not, we don't have any, any designation. We're trying to protect any rules. We're trying to any points we're trying to hit right.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, you know, I'd say that one of the most important parts of this is that you can have I've kind of learned this through processes I've been involved in where you can have all the ordinances in the world but if they're not enforced, but you're not going to make any progress. And true enforcement really, I always believe, comes from the people where, if you know, campaign to get a some sort of like lighting ordinance on inner town, that's, that's only the beginning of the process. You got to get, get buy-in from everybody else and then the community supports that, and so if there are offenders, you know, then you have to kind of raise a little bit of a noise to make sure that it's to the government, to make sure that's being addressed and you know if the ordinances are on the books.
Bill McGeeney:Right over in Colorado. I've been seeing a lot of places out there trying to get some Darce God destinations have. Have you? Do you live in any of these cells? Are you aware of any of the issues, any of things?
Frank Turina:Usually in the fall the Milky Way kind of goes right over the mountain range of the Sangria de Cristo's just fantastic. I'm working a little bit. I'm doing a some night sky, a photography workshop for NGO in Alamosa, colorado Called San Luis Valley go or the cell we go. They're trying to create a night sky preserve Down in the San Luis Valley. They have exceptional night skies. I did a workshop down there from Great Sand Dunes National Park and the skies are just fantastic, just really. You know Very clear that the weather conditions there are often very Optimal and you get some really amazing night skies.
Frank Turina:So I know there are some some others that are in the works and I can't remember hearing one you might know, ken about. It was over on the Western slope of Colorado or on Grand Junction that I believe was trying to get a designation and I think that may have included Colorado National Monument over the Grand Junction. But there are several. It is a very active area. The, the IDA Colorado chapter, has done some great things and they've done. They've gotten the governor to sign a resolution Creating I think it was last June, was like dark sky month. They got a lot of press and so yeah, there's. It's a pretty active state in terms of night sky protection and advocacy.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I was curious because Denver is growing so fast and I mean, last time I was in Denver was what was for 2018. I went out for JABF a few times and want to work inside, not on the party side. So it went out for the Great American beer festival a few times and Remember flying into Denver at that time the city was trying to get to the airport and I think by this point city's out to the airport now. So I was wondering because, with all that buildup all the way and all the the flat land, you know, I assume that many of these, these goals of trying to, you know, promote some some kind of Light pollution abatement, are facing some pushback. They're facing pushback from developers probably, probably from a lot of homeowners as well.
Frank Turina:It's probably a little class four or five to the West, so not Definitely. Can see some.
Bill McGeeney:I'll take that Frank for me. That's great.
Frank Turina:Yeah, so I can. Sometimes, you know, the conditions are good, I can see the Milky Way, kind of Arctic, over my, you know, over the house, but to the East it's a whole different story. So I have this, you know, massive light down from Denver, sort of hitting the, the more pristine night sky, like directly over my house. So I, you know, I, I'm in this, this, I'm like right in the battleground between light pollution and you know, and better quality skies. So I just have to look up at night to see that, that, you know, conflict.
Frank Turina:And you know what I've noticed with the nights, the lights of Denver and I've lived here for about five years now is that the Color of the light dome has been changing. When I first got there, you know the I took some pictures and the the sky glow over Denver, was definitely had this orangey, you know, amber cast to it and now it's it's as the years have gone on, with more and more LEDs, it's gotten kind of bluer and whiter, as you know, year by year. So, and as an astrophotographer that's a little tricky for me, because the amber glow from like little pressure Sodium was pretty easy to deal with in terms of getting it out of your images. But the sort of broad spectrum LED light is much trickier so I've been kind of cursing that as the hairs go by. It's been terrible.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I think can't compare. Relates to this one on full moon nights. They're not nearly as bright as cloudy nights. Cloudy nights are actually brighter than double moons here in Philly.
Ken Walczak:Back to. We've recorded. If you're, you know, use sqm's, you know just. I think, 13.4 Magnetons, or second, squared on a cloudy snowy, there you go.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I get three well, this leads perfect into the next article. We have some interesting news out of the UK, where by city of London has adopted a net zero light pollution requirement. Developers in a section of the city known as the square mile now must submit detailed plans of how to minimize light pollution when applying for changes. The requirement apparently passed with unanimous support in the planning and transport committee of London. Explicit its justification was the issue of light pollution, further supported by energy use and ecological determinants. So light pollution was the first justification there, supported by energy use and ecological determinants. The provision makes exceptions for security, inclusion and accessibility.
Bill McGeeney:Lighting Staying in the UK. The House of Lords has tasked the science and technology committee to tackle poorly understood, poorly regulated noise and light pollutants. The Guardian article implicates a 130,000 of healthy years lost to Noise pollution in the UK, with 40% of Britain's exposed to unhealthy levels of road traffic noise. In addition, it's mentioned that both noise and light pollution can contribute to heart disease and premature death, the latter being backed up by Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine study. And heck. Why not cover this while we're here?
Bill McGeeney:There's even a Tory MP over in the UK is aiming to breathe life back into glow worms. We need to protect our dark skies, mr Baker said. Baker appears to be working with the organization bug life to promote not just dark skies but reduce use of pesticides and Habitat restoration. So, ken, just wanted to shoot this over to you real fast because we had one of your colleagues, john Barenty, and a lot of few months back and I know you're very familiar, john, from your work with dark skies, and he mentioned about trying to get to a net zero light pollution plan and this kind of feeds in from what we're just talking about and you know, in a Denver experience, right, is it better to stop light pollution? It is tracks where it's at right now and hold it? Is it even realistic to push it to try and like Remove or try and improve skies?
Ken Walczak:I think it really depends, and it's a town by town, state by state or government by government to question, because in some places, when you have, you know, like the, the towns of Frank, which was talking about that have you know, been really thoughtful about the maybe protecting their night skies in Colorado because of Realizing it's a valuable resource for them? It might, there might be much more chance and much more support. But you know, one of the things that I see, you know, like the city of London story, and you know, just to just to clarify, a city of London is like a, think of it like a burrow, like a small part of London. It's actually not the entire city of London, it's. It's called city in London.
Ken Walczak:So this is, you're not going to be changing, you're not gonna see the Milky Way from downtown London anymore. But if you have one Entity that actually says, hey, let's try this, let's do this, we care about this, that could, that could lead to other other people seeing it as an example and maybe it's picked up. You know the. You know the British government just did a report on the oh, I'm forgetting the name right now but on light pollution as a national issue. So you put these pieces together, but these pieces of the puzzle together, and it starts building something. You're not just gonna Change it all overnight.
Bill McGeeney:Frank, you have anything on this? Yeah, I.
Frank Turina:Love the London was a light because that was, you know, the whole impetus behind the natural sounds, of night skies division in the parks interest. Right, you know, when we were initially just the natural sounds program and there was this fledgling night sky program, that was kind of Basically, two guys in the National Park Service that were cared, they cared about the issue and they started this little program. Maybe it's three or four people that really didn't have a home in the in the park service and the administration Decided to put them in with the natural sounds program and we became the natural sounds, a nice guys division and you know we talked a lot about as a staff about how those two fields fit together. And you know, one of the ideas that kept coming up when we were having a discussion was this idea of sensory ecology. Right, and and just the ability for species, wildlife to use, had there, to take full advantage of the of the sensory Stimulant that are in the environment, and both noise and light pollution interfere with that ability.
Frank Turina:So we kind of came up and played around with this idea of sensory ecology as sort of the, the thread that wove through both of those issues and they all they have a lot of similarities in terms of the effects on physiology and the psychosocial issues Circadian rhythm issues, sleep disruption, you know and all the negative effects that that can result from from that Circadian rhythm and disruption, sleep disruption so it really was a good fit that you know that we had these two programs together and this article really, I think you know, talks a lot about that connection and you know just how both of these issues can have similar effects on people's physiology and their so their psychology and their their slow, the you know psychological health. So, yeah, I thought it was a really interesting article from that.
Bill McGeeney:From that extent, yeah, I think you make a great point on the actual psychological well-being of someone. Is that enough to make noise or light pollution and environmental pollutant?
Frank Turina:Yeah, I think it's. It's clearly, you know, an environmental issue that that is is Equivalent to the health effects from water pollution or air pollution or any other type of environmental degradation that we were likely to encounter. You know, I think we have a. You know, the fact that these areas have been overlooked until recently Doesn't really diminish their importance in terms of of, you know, environmental and social health.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, you know I was gonna add on to that where you know, kind of relating to that last part of the story with the MP who's Looking at trying to make a better environment for bugs which are, you know, part of the major part of the food chain pollinators there, you know they have so many roles that in our society and and you think about like kind of going off of Frank was saying is that you know you have these environmental stressors. It not know one of them is the cause of all the problems, for example of, like, the collapse of insect populations and species diversity. But each one of them plays a role and if you ignore one and you're not solving the problem, you know if you ignore some of them, you're not a solid problem. I think it's about time that we start thinking of light pollution as being an actual pollutant.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, that part of the issue.
Bill McGeeney:That part of the issue is really nicely actually again into our next story. I like how this is lining up. This is really good. I'm sustaining on topic for policy for just one more second.
Bill McGeeney:Came across this article from WPBF News. Environmental organization files a hundred six page report over light pollution on Palm Beach threatens lawsuit. The complaint cites local homes and residential buildings for violating ordinances designated to protect sea turtle hatchlings, including nighttime lighting violations, poor nest markings and evidence of vehicles on the beach. The organization is giving Palm Beach two months before they decide to file a lawsuit against the county Pretty article. Palm Beach County's environmental resource management believes around two million sea turtles hatch in Palm Beach County every year, making it the number one place in the US for sea turtle nests per mile. Apparently, the breakers a building cited in the complaint through passionate words from bearer warriors united the conservation group filing suit. You can see their light from nighttime from a mile away. It was lit up like NASA launch pad. They're lighting. You can see from outer space, I'm pretty sure. Well, they can. Can you see this from where you're at over in Chicago? That's a big question I have.
Ken Walczak:With what do you mean? Like similar?
Bill McGeeney:Well, evidently the breakers. You can see from space the light shining over the beach here.
Ken Walczak:Probably if we have ISS images of it and the ISS astronauts there sometimes take nighttime photos of the Earth at night and is one of our best sources of good high resolution color information. I could pull up a big around and maybe get back to you on that, but yeah, you know what. I really was interested in this story and I tried to follow up as much as I could. It seems like the group that did it they have kind of mainly a Facebook presence. I was really trying to find that 106 page report. I thought like man, that's great from a. They're not pulling around, they're actually filing lawsuits, they're actually compiling information, data and this is the way to do it.
Bill McGeeney:I was looking into the history behind the name Bear Wars. I'm sure have been in Florida, but I'm not sure when the last time. Are they still in Florida? I don't know that part of Florida, who knows? I just curious about the name.
Ken Walczak:It was actually, I think, one of the founders. She had a bear encounter once and something that was like just really kind of I don't want to speak for her, but you know really changed her philosophy and it, yeah, not sure, yeah, as a Florida resident, how that connects, but yeah.
Bill McGeeney:Hey, whatever, whatever it takes right. So it's interesting to see right. It's interesting to see organization actually try and hold a county's feet to the fire for ordinances, as you said before, Ken, it's one thing to have them, it's another thing to enforce them. And you have an organization is actually saying, hey, here's the law, why aren't you doing anything about it? I want to take a quick breather right here. I'm very excited to have these fine gentlemen with me today the hands on science educator. We got Frank Turina, who has phenomenal Azure photography pictures and inhaling all the way from the other planetarium over in Chicago. Ken Walczak said it right this time. Right, I've been killing Colorado too. Sorry, that's my East coast side and he said Colorado. I know this. Before we get, we get going. I want to talk real fast about some of the work that's involved in bringing you to the show every month and Ken, who recently became a supporter, which means so much to me. Thank you, ken. Thank you very much.
Bill McGeeney:To phrase some of the server and production costs that we incur in building the show on a monthly basis. Make no mistake, light pollution news is a full month process, starting at the top of the month. We do our best to try and scurry together all the pertinent articles that affect the topic of light pollution. Then we build the show based on what we find, sort the pertinent articles, remove the unnecessary ones. We essentially are reviewing upwards of about 80 articles a month. Once we have those pieces in hand, we'll record the show, typically on a Sunday afternoon. It's my favorite part of the whole process. I get to talk to these cool dudes and then we send it out to editing to a rock star, caden. From there we finalize the show and then move to our marketing push on all platforms Reddit or website, instagram or newsletter, linkedin and where we build a month long content to help that show to engage you listener.
Bill McGeeney:So what I'm asking for you today is if you like what we're doing here, if it adds value to the discussion, to the topic, to your knowledge regarding the issues of light pollution, please, why not chip in a few dollars each month to help us continue to focus the light only where it's needed? And if that's not your thing, no worries. Well, how about you share the show with your friends or colleagues who might find it interesting, or simply go out to your favorite podcasting app and you can provide a rating and review. This is a way of saying thanks. We deeply appreciate you, the listener, and we want to provide the best experience and best news discussions as it relates to all that's going on in the world light pollution. Please feel free to reach out to me directly at billatlightpollutionnewscom. Ken, you're a supporter. Do you have anything you'd like to add? And folks, as a backstory, ken was one of the first people I talked to when learning about light pollution myself. I'm very honored to have you as a supporter, ken, so thank you very much.
Ken Walczak:Thank you, it's Paul Price-Sepay. I mean, I'm a podcast junkie and I just listen to so many podcasts and, believe it or not, I actually listen to a lot of light pollution podcasts. There are handful out there, but I was really impressed by the way you pulled together just what's going on and then address it and think about it, and I like what you do at the show. You don't have to pay a monthly fee to get on the show.
Bill McGeeney:I had to bring Ken on. He's a very knowledgeable one. I love the and Ken called me out on something early, so that's another reason. Coming back to the news, we do have one crime story to report, and this might be a first. There's been a theft about 3,000 pounds that's almost $4,000 in equipment, including observing equipment such as binoculars.
Bill McGeeney:Eyepieces that are used in outreach were taken between July 21st and July 28th of this year from an observatory building in Wales. The building, which houses outreach materials, is apparently quite remote and even inaccessible to the public. The loss has forged public events in the international dark sky park of the Eland Valley to be tailored down for the duration of summer. For those curious, in addition to teleVI pieces and some solar binoculars, the thieves got away with a Skywatch or EVO star 120 millimeter telescope, an EQ3 mount and I would have really loved to see the video of this a Skywatch or Skyliner 250px Dobsonian, which is a 10 inch telescope. For these of you at home, that's a big boy. That'll be fun to watch these scurry off a remote field to their car with. I got nothing on that one, guys.
Frank Turina:Yeah, those are. That's a lot of equipment that weighs a lot of pounds, so I can't imagine calling them, you know, the house field and putting it in your car and just those are huge scopes.
Bill McGeeney:What do you do? Take an ATV out there and throw it in the back. I mean, how do you get these? Yeah, what kind of scope you guys have like for outreach over there at the other, what do you use for the outreach?
Ken Walczak:We're starting to use it for research purposes. Now it's a 24 inch playmark scope in our observatory. Then for our outreach work, we use a lot of like maybe six, inch, eight inch Dobsonians they're so easy to take around and things like that.
Bill McGeeney:And I mean, like this week, looking at Saturn, right, Stuff like that. It's always, always great. We just did an outreach event where we were able to capture a few of the really bright Messier clusters. You know, it's great Like you can see those from almost everywhere. And I actually knew someone. I actually do know someone, I should say new. He's still alive, Thank God he lives in Queens. He'll look at double stars exclusively because that's all you can see in Queens, but he'll look at double stars and actually, you know, go out observing you know most nice of the year and just being able to pick out double stars, why not? Why not? You work with what you got right. You work with astronomy.
Bill McGeeney:Ever noticed any green trails following any of those Starlink photo bombs? Well, I kid, but apparently Elon's pride and joy when he's not installing giant blinding X's on top of buildings are leaking radiation. This comes to us from Business Insider. Starlink satellites are leaking radiation into protected 1505 to the 153 megahertz band. One astronomer compared the impact to a regular band of static on a radio that occurred exactly every five minutes. Such interference impacts the study of dark matter, study of star formation, not to mention essentially bricks millions of dollars, telescope radio systems built over the past decades. Starlink actually has worked with astronomers and they've probably been one of the few companies in the communications world right now that they're sending up, you know, telescopes and they try and put the coatings on and they try and you know, actually, as I understand it, they're actually trying to dim down some of that brightness. But this is a new issue that they probably didn't even, they probably weren't even aware of the over on the sky brightness that increase, increase from satellites.
Frank Turina:It was a really interesting paper because you know satellites are so, they're so dim in their scattered across the sky and to realize or to be able to to measure the impact that that has on overall sky brightness I thought was just incredible. It was very eye opening because I never would have guessed that the satellites, from all the satellites combined, would have that kind of an impact on sky brightness. So I thought you know that the Starlink satellite trains and stuff that I get in my astrophotography all the time, you know, there that's the most noticeable, probably the most noticeable aspect of this issue. But but you know, I think that paper did a really good job of you know bringing some attention to the issue of you know how satellites impact the sky quality.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, that was definitely something I know. When John was on, he mentioned about you know that we had an article that came up on on the brightness that was going to be apparent with those satellites. So let's stay on the topic of education. Real fast, the dark skies convert into big time recruiting tools for future researchers. The greater big bend international dark sky reserve as one of the largest certified dark sky places in the world, at 15,000 square miles anchored together, this reserve is by the McDonald Observatory, which sports the 10 meter hobby Everly telescope, which is the third largest optical telescope in the world, the 82 inch auto shrew telescope and the 107 inch Harlan J Smith telescope.
Bill McGeeney:The university of Texas has been able to successfully identify new black holes, new planets, star collisions and more. However, that's only part of the story. The other part is the legwork of Stephen Hummel and Bill Wren. Over the course of more than a decade, these two were closely with intermediary organizations, including Texas by Nature, an organization founded by former First Lady Laura Bush and the Texas Railroad Commission.
Bill McGeeney:Hummel and Wren were able to obtain buy-in for installing responsible lighting fixtures from one of the largest oil and gas producing centers in the world. One such facility, run by Cal and Petroleum cited improved visibility following a dark sky friendly lighting overhaul. In the past our approach has been to get a whole bunch of lights and blast things up, but that leaves a lot of shadows, says Chris Gafford, safety manager at Cal and Petroleum. You get the right kind of lights and space them out in the right way and it's actually better lit up, Fewer dark spots, you don't have guys tripping over stuff. Another company, Howard Energy, also reported improved safety after converting over to more responsible, deliberate lighting. This sounds like a great win for everybody went for the community, went for the business, went for science and, oddly enough, a relative win for the local ecology. Is what Hummel and Wren did at McDonald's repeatable for other areas that lack the major astronomical research centers?
Ken Walczak:You know, once you have something that's so valuable. I don't know if you've ever been to McDonald's observatory, but it's amazing location.
Speaker 4:Oh, you got to get out there.
Ken Walczak:You can tour the telescopes and the locations amazing. Like you said, it's just a north of Alpine Texas which is north of Big Bend, which I've been to as well. You're like that whole area is just like a valuable resource and you have these very expensive research telescopes there and obviously lighten up the night sky and make them useless would be just a detriment to the economy. But I think this is what this really inspiring thing about this story is that the two quotes you had were actually from the petroleum industry. Folks saying, hey, you know what? We were asked to do this light better, and not only is it better for the observatory, but it's also better for us. You know they so often I think people don't see good examples of lighting because they always think that, oh, more light is what you need. Once you see how the lighting can be done right, you're like, hey, wait a minute, you know we don't have to just blast light everywhere anymore. It's actually better for us. So that was kind of inspired by this story.
Frank Turina:We have in the Park Service dealt with oil and gas on a number of occasions. The probably the most infamous was the Bakken Shale field up in North Dakota, south Dakota, that area. There's a park up there called the Teddy Roosevelt Homestead and we put some, we did some measurements of the night sky there before this big increase in oil and gas production and that field and went back three years later after the boom and during the boom and saw a 300% increase in sky brightness from that park, and so it's something that we've, you know, the Park Service has always dealt with and been aware of. Another another satellite image of that Bakken Shale field shows this gigantic bright spot that's comparable in size to, like the city of Chicago, right, but it's in reality. It's not that big. It's just has to do with some of the reflectivity and how the satellite captures the data, but it's still very bright there and the.
Frank Turina:You know there's a lot of data that shows the impact of oil and gas development on night skies, mostly due to flaring. So it's the off-gassing and clearing the methane that's being released and the gases. So something that we've been, that the Park Service has worked on, and in other places too. We worked in the Four Corners area and near Chaco Canyon or Chaco Culture National Park. They had some potential effects from proposed leases for natural oil and gas development and we worked with them to try to identify ways to assess the impacts from oil and gas. So it is a big issue and you know it's something that that can really affect the nice guys in national parks and I think you know that the oil and gas industry has been like with the case of McDonald Observatory. I think they've been pretty amenable to looking at the issue and trying to resolve it as best they can.
Bill McGeeney:Frank when I asked about those the bright lights up in Dakotas. So North Dakota is most of that, just coming from the flares.
Frank Turina:I think we determined that most of it was from the flares. Once the, you know, the drilling derricks can be pretty brightly lit, but once the pads are, once the wells are in production, the amount of lighting required to maintain those sites is decreased. So it's mainly the drilling with the big derricks and the, and then the flaring, the gases.
Bill McGeeney:So I guess, how often did the flares go up Are you aware of?
Frank Turina:I'm not really sure. I know we did a little research to look at some of the possible ways of minimizing the effects of flaring and there are sort of like these cylinders that are chambers for flaring off, flaring this gas, and so it's kind of enclosed in this little philo that helps minimize the light pollution from those.
Bill McGeeney:Right, cause it's really bright. It's really bright when you have a flare, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is very bright.
Bill McGeeney:Well, I mean, there's not much you can do with that, right yeah?
Frank Turina:I mean, it has to be dealt with right and I think yeah, I'm not an expert in oil and gas by any means, but just I think there's a way there there's benefits to recapturing that gas right and reusing it and using it rather than venting it. So I think it's in the best interest of oil and gas companies to try to minimize the amount of flare they do. But again, I think that's how it works.
Bill McGeeney:Moving on. You've heard me report on this in the past. I'm quite sure everyone is listening, is aware of MSG, the same company that allegedly uses facial recognition software as a weapon against opposing attorneys. Well, msg is in news again. This time they lit their new mega LED sphere in Vegas. In case you didn't see it, you can check it out in the show notes and watch the fourth of July celebration. And what's there to say about this globe, this, this giant sun in the desert? It definitely delivered. While watching, you can notice significant and bright reflections cast against nearby buildings. I don't know what to think of this. One and one respect, I'll admit like the sphere definitely has a cool factor. It's pretty amazing what they can do with this actual LED ball screen thing they got. It's something novel and unique and embraces commercialism with a wait for gravity like no other. On the other hand, I'm not sure the term light pollution is sufficient to describe the level of light it raw on a night, or wherever night, was left in Vegas. Don't have any thoughts on the MSG sphere.
Ken Walczak:I didn't see the clip that they did that first demonstration. There was one amazingly ironic thing that they projected the nighttime view of the earth on it. So you actually see all the light pollution and then wonder if it becomes another dot on the light pollution map. You mentioned that thing about the. I mean, let's just look at the immediate environment. If you look at that video, you see, like when it's going off showing all this stuff, you see the facades of all these hotels next door being just lit up and I'm like I think they're, they're, they're going to have to cut their rates to get people to stay there. Put this way to me it's like, uh, you're not being a good neighbor, you know, and that's that a lot of times. That's what it really comes down to. It's like if you're going to, just like you know, think of you went out in your backyard and blasted a stereo all night long, you know, you know, I think the neighbors would be annoyed.
Bill McGeeney:So I kind of equated to that, and not even getting into all the ecological issues, I mean, that's beyond like blasting a stereo, that's like having a full on festival concert in your backyard every night.
Frank Turina:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's Las Vegas. You know what are you going to do. Right, there's. There was some night sky data taken from Southern part of Utah, 200 miles away from Vegas, and in the images you can see the Lexor tower light beam going up through the clouds. So you know it's Vegas is Vegas. You know. I don't know, this is just kind of part of the courts, you know it is. It is just ridiculous amount of light and just completely unnecessary.
Bill McGeeney:But so is this building very efficient with all the LEDs he uses?
Ken Walczak:No, no, you know it could be efficient. It's not a bunch of just incandescent bulbs flickering on. Yeah, I mean I forgot how many total square footage of screen they have, or whatever. There's a big energy budget there, regardless of how efficient LEDs are. You're putting that much light out. You're still using a lot of energy.
Frank Turina:Yeah, well, that's the trade off with efficiency. Right, in the best world, the efficiency would require, like, you can get the same amount of light for less money. Right, that's the benefit of the efficiency. I think some places have turned that on its head and said, oh there's, you know, the lighting is more efficient so I could put more lighting out. Right, and then that's sort of like you know, the unfortunate aspect of increasing efficiency. It gives some people motivation to just put out more light because they can afford it.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I think in many places you have, you know, facilities, budgets that probably haven't changed or adapted to actual the price of light, right. So to your point, frank. But yeah, I mean, it's Vegas, what would you expect? And you know, that's part of the ostentatious kind of characteristic of Vegas, right, that's why you go to Vegas, I guess. But it's interesting, it's up, and if anyone wants to, you know, have a glowing globe next to them, you can go. Stay at the hotel that Ken mentioned, because you'll be able to.
Bill McGeeney:I don't know if your shades are actually going to do anything for that guy. Well, right on cue, john Barrington and Ruskin Hartley released the Dark Sky International State of the Science 2023 report, and a report notes considerable rise in research focusing on artificial light at night, from just above over 500 articles way back in 2002 to close to 4,000 articles last year alone. I was lucky enough to virtually attend the 2023 Artificial Light at Night conference this year and was able to see many of these papers firsthand. However, I do have a confession, ken I was unable to catch your presentation. Would you be so kind as to give us, like, an overview of your talk?
Ken Walczak:Yeah, it was on a method. So one of the I mentioned earlier in the show that part of what we do at the Adler Planetarium is design ability of the instruments and we've designed a camera. You've probably seen all sky images of the sky, right? Well, obviously Frank, you have. You've worked with Dan and you know that whole system. So we, our camera only costs about $200 to make and it's an all sky camera. So you put it out at night, let it run all night long and collect it and then process the data afterwards. So the great thing about I know like the National Park Service system costs a few tens of thousands of dollars maybe ours costs about 200. So obviously the quality is not as top notch.
Ken Walczak:But the great thing about having an inexpensive camera is that we deployed 10 of them simultaneously and the reason why we wanted to do that is we spread them all around our urban night sky place our payloads, preserves and outside the region, around the preserves, simultaneously, looking at the light domes that you can see and the light glow on the horizon. By putting those cameras kilometers apart, miles apart, you can actually triangulate and say like, oh, that dome over there, especially around Chicago, there's a lot of things, for contributing light is maybe not the thing you think it is. Maybe it's some, for example, an industrial facility very close to the border of the protected area, whereas there might be a town further away. You can actually determine where that light's coming from, and addressing an entire town's light might not be very easy, but you maybe address one business's light and that could actually help us do that thing where we want to make the skies better in our urban night sky place. That was our experiment.
Bill McGeeney:Excellent. Thank you, ken. There's a lot of that type of research going on in the current field, right, just trying to geospatially analyze a lot of what the light pollution is and where it's at and how to understand how to measure it.
Ken Walczak:Actually, do you mind if I chime in on one more thing about commenting on John's report?
Bill McGeeney:Yes, feel free.
Ken Walczak:So I thought one of the most important things that you mentioned about the state of the night report is that there were two decades ago, there were 500 articles or papers published on light pollution, and last year there's 4,000. So, wow, where did all this come from? Not only is there more interest and there's more focus on this and it's getting more information out there and we're learning more about it, but one of the things that really started that is that we actually started getting better data about the night sky as the National Park Services System from some satellites, and as we start getting data, we're actually able to learn more things, and so this is just, I think, going to continue. It's almost like you just suddenly discovered a new kind of science almost, you know.
Bill McGeeney:What's the most unique thing you found this year, for any of the papers that came to light?
Ken Walczak:Let's see, oh boy, I don't know. There's just so much, especially in the ecological field, that it's pretty amazing. Some of the work that's been done on insects has been pretty amazing. I think it's just not even just a single species, but just cross species. You know just this large scale impact of light at night on insects and what that's. The outcomes of that are going to be very, very, very important. So I don't know, over the last year, that's something that comes to mind.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I found the actual. It was great to be at the conference to actually see these papers come up, and one of the things I found really interesting was some of the social discussions that some of the meta studies I guess, including the people's perceptions like. For instance, one of them was that people were in favor of light pollution mitigation but they weren't in favor of any light pollution mitigation that reduced any street light brightness and stuff like that.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, you know, a lot of us commented on that that was one of the last talks at the entire conference that it was a real downer. It was a survey done in Switzerland where they yeah, they were like you said, you know, across different ages and everything else. Everybody's like oh yeah, this is an issue, this is something that I've heard more about and well, we don't do anything about it. It's like what it wasn't the supposed to be the takeaway.
Bill McGeeney:Well, for those of you who are interested in reading the StatoSize report, you can find a link over in our show notes as well. This is over on the Dark Sky International website. I want to play this for you guys. It's an amazing poetic reading by Sense Turner. To quote the YouTube description London is a poetic exploration of the nocturnal city and a requiem for diminishing urban darkness.
Speaker 4:I find myself on this land and realize I've never truly known darkness. Time in the countryside shed a light on my concrete life. I grew up listening to the streets talking about how the lights are blinding my eyes and I'm thinking. People are not that different from the most at night, getting lost in London's lights. They come for the culture, hypnotized by spotlights dancing around their favorite artists. Many come for the fame, drawn to a dream lured by the limelights, they want to be seen In a few dark corners, summer crystal balling. Most come for the promise of a fortune, magpie squawking. Others swear it's a spiritual calling. And some come to write their names In neon green graffiti. Glow splashed up a wall in the South Bank's skate park. Kick pushing off the dark.
Speaker 4:Before LEDs and fluorescent bulbs, we filled the night with fire, and as powerful as fire's roar, they never shook us out of balance. When blue lights shine during the night time, it pulls us out of rhythm, but fire red and soothing amber seem to be different. I never knew that the wealthiest areas are the darkest at night or that most of us living in the UK can't see more than 30 stars. Who knew? A third of our city's workforce is up and out with the foxes. I wonder how many suffer insomnia and what the actual cost is.
Speaker 4:Lightworkers raised their lightsabers cutting shapes in night skyclubs. Security guards armed with torches aim at night stalkers and fire light shots. Nightclubs base-bumped lasers into faces. Red eyes doing the robot. When the night force flipped on switches, they turned the star lights off. Moonlight was once the main light. Now it's consumed by the many more lights. Nocturnal creatures can't find the shoreline or navigate safely at night time. Our circadian rhythms all out of sync. Too much light and not enough closed eyes. So who gets the right to rest and how long can we really deny the darkness? It's older than the sun.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, that's a pretty great little poem, little video there on YouTube. I don't know how you guys felt about that. I had to play that. That was so cool. Just forward it over to me a couple weeks back and a great little piece there.
Frank Turina:Yeah, I think that was amazing. I think we need more spokespeople like that for the issue. She's very disparate, effective at getting her point across to maybe an audience that we have a little trouble reaching. I think she just did a really great job at reaching out to that audience.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, it's really effective. This came up at the end of the Allen Conference. There's a few of us who are talking about the next Allen Conference is going to be in Ireland 2025. We're like maybe there should be an arts track, a culture track where we're talking about it's important that people see this as not as a technical thing in their lives, but it actually needs vision, but needs some expression that might connect people to it. Another example, and also what Frank's saying, is also getting a different generation connected. I think Bonnie is one of those people. That is just great. I've seen some new teenage faces and stuff in getting involved in light pollution. A lot of them are being swayed by facts and figures. They're getting swayed by vision and poetry and just experience.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, the the dark sky does a great job with having the photo contest right, and I know from previous experience I've worked to try and requisition some, some pieces for actual beer labels, believe it or not. And To find people who know Much about the sky is like in the art world is actually pretty hard, at least around here. So what I had to do is I kind of had a coach the artist I selected and had to kind of coach him along on what he should do and point him in the right direction and point him in different resources. But I know, scoured a whole bunch of different places and and it was really difficult to find an artist who but I say artists, you know, like graphic designer or someone, usually in there like early mid to late 20s and they're trying to.
Bill McGeeney:You know, they they didn't really have a concept, they didn't have a concept of any kind like night sky and he kind of starting night art. It just wasn't, it wasn't something they ever thought about and they just like I don't know, I don't even know what I do for this. So I think they'll be great, ken. I think they'll be. That'll be really good, I think, ken. Yeah.
Ken Walczak:I'm gonna see what we knew I might be drafted into being. So yeah, I'll let you know. We get an art track going on in our research.
Bill McGeeney:I'll be huge. I would love it. I love good art and I would love to see people really embrace and from artistic standpoint, embrace, you know, the amazing night sky and and, frank, you already do this with your astrophotography. Ireland actually had, like a young some, a targeted astrophotography Workshop for for younger people, I think it's. It's something like whenever anyone sees the sky, they, they get curious and they they get really inspired.
Bill McGeeney:You know you don't really do that with a, you know, like a building as much some bills are really nice if they're well-thought-out and well-designed, but for the most part you just you know, you're not. You're not thinking the same way.
Frank Turina:Exactly.
Frank Turina:You know, I think that one of the things that I one of the more popular blog posts of mine on my website there's a night sky resource center that work is was about all right and how the night sky inspires the sense of awe, and how important it is because you know, when you experience, ah, you know, you have this feeling of you know you have these pro social behaviors right, you're you're more empathetic, you're more Impassioned, that you're more, you know, willing to help people just from experiencing this sense of awe and there's probably nothing more Effective at creating this sense of law people as the night sky.
Frank Turina:It just happens you go under the night sky and you just get this sense of awe and and I think that's, you know, really important you know the thing to do to reach people and to bring is think. Once you get people under a dark sky like that, it's easy to get them into the movement right and to get them to understand the importance of night sky, why it should be protected, and so I think those types of experiences Sort of draw people in right, and so we're lucky, in a sense, that we have this resource that has the power to do that, this resource that we're trying to protect has the power to like pull people into the movement to help protect it, just because of it's just beauty and awe inspired nature. So I think that's something that we, as night sky advocates, should be very grateful for that we have this resource that is very compelling, right and almost in some ways, makes our job a little bit easier to get people on board.
Bill McGeeney:Yep, frank, I'm going to challenge you on that. That idea that ah makes everyone better. Cuz. Right here we're gonna dive into a few articles and ask for tourism, but before we get there, at this piece from inside hook, written by Tobias Carroll is stargazing better as a social activity? Hope notes a recent MPR article that detailed the cherry spring star party, a party that apparently had an overflow waiting list of 400 people. That's 150 shy of the initial allotment of spaces.
Bill McGeeney:For those of you at home who have never been to a star party, I recently was interviewed on a space tourist podcast where I helped describe the scene. But star parties are just generally events for amateurs. Shot emers and asher photographers spend a week in together In a field geeking out over the night sky. Galaxy is nebula's gear. It's fun for the whole family, you get to see really cool handmade stuff and it's always a good time. But a couple months ago we had Scott Morgan on the assistant manager of the park area overseeing cherry springs, and I got the sense to public viewing.
Bill McGeeney:Nights have provided some challenges for the park service. Long, the most obvious dark sky park is essentially a 24-hour facility, making staffing arrangements tricky as how to properly provide safe experiences for guests. So I found this interesting, considering the National Park Service had his Facebook post. That occurred only a few days after the Perseids and there's only a few days after Perseids weekend at Mount Rainier National Park.
Bill McGeeney:As was evident, the park experienced the following issues, including trampling off fragile subalpine meadows, parking in prohibitive streetsides, road camping also known as camping areas that are not permitted and, of course, trash, because people just leave trash. I don't understand that part, but people just love to leave trash everywhere. Almost an echo of the same story can be found at Joshua tree, where a mighty Los Angeles Denison somehow one off to Seattle folks by simply fording their own roads through the park lands. These challenges, combined with and let's be honest the fact that most people really don't engage with the night you know, frank, you're mentioning about this beautiful night sky they, they actually don't engage with the night that much, or rather should say any type of dimmness or darkness. That makes me wonder is stargazing really better as a social activity? I?
Frank Turina:Love that. I love that question it's, you know, because it really kind of does bring up a lot of Issues that you know we need to deal with. But I think, the way I see it, it's, you know, with parts becoming more active in and more visited at night than they have been in the past, I think it tends to extend the problems that they're often encountered during the daytime into the night. So, yeah, I'm sure that star parties cause, you know, a lot of environmental damage when you get that big of a group of people together doing something like that. But so does you know the crowds that emerge whenever there's a, you know a bear sighting along the road in Yellowstone or you know Some other event that that draws in a lot of people, you know there's, there are just With the, with the crowds in, you know, not just national parks, but all, all parks these days, like cherry springs. It just has a, you know it just creates its own problems and the fact that we're doing more at night now we're doing more star parties, kind of takes those normal daytime problems and is to extends them into the night, and I think that's you know what. I think that's really the challenge of having more star parties and having more. You know, of those types of issues.
Frank Turina:I Personally I tend to. I have been the many star parties. I tend to avoid them because for me, you know, I I'm looking for a different type of experience. I'm not looking for a crowd of people to enjoy the night sky. Yeah, you know, I'm looking for those types of Kind of like changing experiences. You know when you're sitting under a mortal class one sky and you just your jaw drops. So I'm looking at Sort of for a different experience. I'm glad star parties exist.
Frank Turina:I think it opens up this world of the parks at night to a huge group of people that would never experience that. So I think there are a huge benefit for getting people to understand the problem and the issue and and Work and to improve the situation. But I think it's you know, it's not, it's this not for everybody. You know there are, there are benefits of Not going to start parties and finding those experiences on your own.
Frank Turina:One last point on that is that when I teach nice guy photography workshops, one of the things I always spend a lot of time talking to my students about is is sort of this nice guy etiquette right, what you don't do around other people at night and how do you minimize the effects that you're having on astrophotographer down the road, or or you know other people who are trying to experience in that, the night sky. So I think the idea of of having a nice guy, ethic or etiquette is a really important part for a piece of that puzzle as well, in terms of, like, preventing what happened in Montrenier and you know, and Josh retreat.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, one of our previous guests that, daylan Burke, when I was up at the cherries being star party this past summer, we, we actually, I actually was one of the pieces talking about nice guy etiquette. He made a great video he makes so again, similar to you, frank he, he tries to teach people in the technical pieces of astrophotography the gear and all the equipment, stuff like that and he was talking about what not to do at a star party. You know, and my thought was the thing that always gets me is people don't realize this. You don't, you don't think at all about this because you never, ever think about what happens to your car. Right, you just lock it and you just walk away. You just don't. You don't ever think about that.
Bill McGeeney:And I know we just got a new outback and this thing lights up like a freaking globe when you lock the car. I don't even know where all the lights are. I'm still trying to figure out where all the lights are. I, you know, trying to. Usually you can put some covering one in whatnot, but I don't know there's still lights in there that I haven't found yet. So, yeah, you know the first time, the first time you do it or the first time you go to a star party and You'll screw up every which way with light because you think?
Bill McGeeney:about it and you, you remember, you definitely remember, you don't?
Bill McGeeney:want to be that guy next time, exactly. Well, continue along the line of thought. We have this article from backpacker, by Emma white the best no-crow places to go stargazing. So Emma starts off her piece with this. Last fall I went stargazing at Joshua tree and, just like Frank said, he spent most of the night listening to crowds hooting holler from the campsites nearby. Sometimes you just want to count shooting stars without hearing the incredible edmb pumping from someone's tiny bluetooth speaker far off in the distance. Now, let's see, frank. I wanted, I want to gauge you. Let's go on the list here. This is what she says is being the best No-crow places to go. All right, so natural bridges, national monument, utah, yes or no?
Frank Turina:Absolutely fantastic We've done. You know the park service collected data there. It's one of the darkest parks in the United States. That whole area in southern utah is is fantastic.
Bill McGeeney:Big Bend national park in texas yes or no?
Frank Turina:Um, yes, they did. They've done a huge amount of work. I don't know, this is probably Geez. Maybe eight or ten years ago now, maybe they they redesigned and did a lighting retrofit for all of their, all of their administrative buildings and their visual visitor center, and we asked them before and after. The parks have tested before and after photos of before the retrofit and after and before. You know you can see. You see where the lights from the visitor center were lighting, up the cliffs and hill sides around the valley, and, and afterwards almost all of that light pollution was gone. So they've done a tremendous amount of work, getting Really dark skies there. So I would give a big bend, a big thumbs up on that.
Frank Turina:Okay, chaco culture national historical park in new mexico, another fantastic site, a little harder to get to, but it's definitely worth it. It's, you know, you know very, and they've also done a lot of work to maintain their dark skies. They've had dark skies, you know. They're kind of in the middle of nowhere, there aren't many light domes on the horizon, and they do a lot of work to try to maintain those, those night skies. And that includes working with BLM on you know what gas leases in the surrounding area and and other other efforts like that.
Bill McGeeney:Central Idaho dark sky reserve and I haven't been specifically.
Frank Turina:Haven't been there specifically, but I've been to a couple of places in central Idaho doing this master photography and some river rafting and up there, and I was pretty impressed with the the amount of of Dark places there are. I do you know, I don't know again, it's sort of the you know with fillings and and how, I'm not, and it seems like there were like three or four cities in around me but the light domes were not particularly horrible. So I I don't know much about that that dark sky reserve Maybe can has more insight on that.
Ken Walczak:I just happened to know some folks that work there doing from ecla that do some observations and some of the reports there and also some of the ideas of Make sure, like you're saying, that the the growth doesn't of other lighting outside of the boundaries don't impact there. So I've never been there. I really wanted. One of my, one of the people I work with she's actually just did a finished up an internship there and she said it was amazing.
Bill McGeeney:Nice, yeah, frank, you were just up Montana, right.
Frank Turina:Yeah, yeah.
Bill McGeeney:Was that? Was that an astrophotography workshop? So?
Frank Turina:I was in. I was actually a river trip so we did the Smith River in Montana and you know it was it's northern Montana and it's Not really around to any place in other places, but really nice night skies, got some good pictures from the river.
Bill McGeeney:That's great. We were up in Alaska and there was no night sky. There was no night, so yeah, so there was no night sky, but it was pretty good too. So it's hot in woods and weights. National monument in Maine yes or no?
Frank Turina:You haven't been there specifically that I have. One of the sort of the early pioneers in the night sky movement in the park service was a cady national park and they have a great night sky festival every year that draws in no thousands and thousands of people every year. Great programming for the night sky they really are. It's sort of a big part of what they promote and why people come to to to the cady. So that's so. Other those two parks cated in woods and and weights, I'm not as familiar with that. I do know that there's a there's a bit of a culture in Maine To protect the night skies.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, I, I did a hundred mile wilderness a while ago in 2017, 2018, and it was. We had a just a great, dry September week. It was Unlike Maine and it was pretty nice. Like the sky was, was very enjoyable. We're in the woods the whole time, but you could see, you could see, you could see stuff, so that's a good news. Okay, final one, final one for you, frank Newport State Park in Wisconsin. How about this?
Frank Turina:one. So the familiarity I have with Newport State Park is there. It's a like just like sherry springs, it's kind of a destination for astrophotographers and there's A tremendous amount of just amazing astrophotography that happens there. And so I think that from what I've seen there at someplace I definitely want to go, just because they they have seen a pretty amazing night sky.
Bill McGeeney:From what I've seen, Ken, I feel like this is one you've been to me, I have not been to.
Frank Turina:what about Ken?
Ken Walczak:No, actually I've heard of it as my partner has gone to Washington Island before, which is right, a little across the lake, a little bit from there, and now that I'm hearing about it it's like, oh one thing. I did discover previous research, an article I wrote about how accessible Dark skies are to people like live in Chicago, for example. You know, most of the students we work with are Just live in Chicago, so if they want to see a true dark sky, this is actually the closest place from Chicago to get Out of my. Only the darkest guys you can. You can find and it's I think it's about 400 miles away.
Bill McGeeney:Oh boy, yeah, that I have to add that to a list. If I'm ever out, out by Chicago, out by on a green bay, I guess it's probably more applicable. But yeah, that's, that's good to know. I yeah well, I've only been to one of those places and I've been to. My favorite moment ever in stargazing was For alcon. One year we actually got the stargaze at the end of the rude embraced canyon. Is that the Rainbow road, something like that, something like rainbow point? Yeah, I'm down there at the bottom, got those targets there and I was one of the. The best experiences as an east coaster going to. That kind of sky was like you know, it's night and day, no moisture. It was like this amazing skies without water. This is this is crazy. You guys are too spoiled.
Frank Turina:I think the probably just a shout out to Capitol Reef National Park. Oh yeah, I went there with my wife last spring and Went out at like three o'clock in the morning to shoot some astrophotography and it's, I think, without a doubt it was the it was the darkest guy I'd ever seen. I mean, conditions are perfect. There was, you know, no moisture in the air. It was just so bright and, you know, it was one of those nights where you could kind of see shadows from the starlight and it was just fantastic. So, and I think the much difference is still the case bit in, the one of the darkest parts that we ever measured at the Park Service was Capitol Reef and Again, they understand that's such a valuable resource for them and they really kind of promoted and do a lot to protect it.
Ken Walczak:Oh, I'll try like the same thing about Capitol Reef. I've experienced the camp down there for a week once and yeah, that was where I looked up and said, okay, I know these guys pretty well and it's like, well, that's a strange star. No, wait a minute, that's Uranus, I mean. Yeah.
Bill McGeeney:Wow, did he look? Look blue.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, kind of greenish blue. Yeah, right, yeah, and I was like, oh my god, I can actually see Uranus.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, Ken knows naked eye.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, yeah, oh.
Speaker 4:Man you guys, my mind right now.
Frank Turina:This is one of the sort of hat for a dark sky. Right, this is m33 Triangulum Galaxy and you know, if you can see that with the naked eye, that's about as good as you're gonna get. And and I think I saw it A 100% shirt was in the right place and I think it with that I could see it from Capitol Reef. It was pretty cool.
Bill McGeeney:That's a mark of a good astronomer when you say I think I saw it. That's that's it. I think this is a once a month show that details all of the pertinent news around the topic of light pollution and, as always, you can learn about all the stories featured here in this show by going over to our website, light pollution news comm, or by following us over on Reddit at r slash light pollution news. Have you had a chance to check out our Instagram page? It's a great place to connect with us. One of our listeners, stephen Hummel Maybe a future guest Hummel actually connected with us for that story on the Texas oil wells. So that was a great little piece and we're very thankful that was able to reach out, went out to us. So if you happen to have some great news, I you'd like to share Anything our way or not. So great news will take both. Feel free to pass along, especially if you're doing something interesting or doing some interesting work. You, especially, like you, know what's going on down Texas. Let us know. Reach out. And maybe you're not on Instagram, no problem, just connect with us and linked in, where we regularly run engaging prompts for you to listen or interact and have your voice heard. You can also reach out directly to me just by email me at bill, at light pollution news comm, and don't forget to subscribe to the show. Wherever you find podcasts Apple, google, spotify For which we have actual special survey questions over on Spotify, it's just like one poll question and just another prompt over there, so you know you listen or can actually like have your voice heard. So it's always good engaging with listeners and hearing hearing from you guys.
Bill McGeeney:Before we continue along, I want to thank my excellent guests. Today we have Frank Torina and Ken Walcheck. I'm always so excited for recording days because I really do get to speak to amazing folks like yourselves, gentlemen. It thrills me to know and to have you guys on. This is truly the part that really does energize me. So, frank, I know you're heavily involved in education and you recently did astronomy and Chile, the educational ambassadors program. This sounds freaking incredible what it's you're? You're an educator. Now you're an educator, right? You? You work over at University Denver as an adjunct professor, and so I'm curious because you, you work on the environmental policy, educating students, environmental policy and do we see any of these issues that we're talking about today start showing up in any of that curriculum?
Frank Turina:I think the the one area is is sort of the idea of sensory ecology, like we talked about before. You know, I think the the idea that there are many different other than just the typical water pollution, air pollution, you know, houserous ways, those types of environmental issues that we're much more familiar with. I think that there's more discussion of other other pollutants like light and like noise, and even it's like there's some some talk now about like olfactory and smelling and the importance of that for wildlife and disrupting that is is you know what it does really is it removes a ton of information that the animal needs to survive From there, you know, they lose that ability to access that information. We all know how much smelling is important for wildlife, right, if you remove that sense from them, they're at a huge disadvantage. Same with with light, and there are lots of maternal animals that require or rely on low levels of light to to, you know, function and and adding light to the environment sort of it takes that opportunity To away from them.
Frank Turina:So we're starting to see a lot more Expansion of the understanding of what environmental degradation means, and it's not just this typical pollutions, that pollutants that we have talked about for you know, decades. It's these other ideas that are sort of gaining more, more traction and in curriculum. So, yeah, I think there is an expansion of this idea of what environmental quality is, and I think that a lot of that is a result of Us looking at the environment more in terms of sustainability and looking at it in terms of you know how all these pieces fit together and and I think that has broadened the idea of what environmental, what the environment is, what it represents and and how it's being degraded. So, yeah, that's probably the biggest area where I've seen issues like like pollution and noise and other issues like that come into play.
Bill McGeeney:Right. What are the questions I do have? Is you know if the current trajectory I don't know how much environment will be left right Like in the next 30 years? We're seeing massive expansion of urbanization everywhere and obviously you know the West is slow to catch up to kind of part of the rest of the world where it's already you see expansion of urbanization that's been going on for quite a while and In that case, in that scenario, is it, is it worth discussing Environmental policy? What's what's the point in even caring about it if we're all we're gonna do is pave over it? That's, that's really good.
Frank Turina:I think that's a really good point, and it's not just about the environment. It's not unlike a lot of the questions that my students have for me. You know when, when they look at climate change, and you know when they see some of these devastating impacts that we're starting to see now, and there there's, there's a lot of real, you know, people call it like climate anxiety or environmental anxiety, and people really don't know what to think anymore. They don't know what to do. You know there are people that younger generation are making decisions not to have kids because of you know, environmental conditions and the future, and you know so there there's a lot of that happening right now, and so I get that question a lot like what's the point? And you know, and the answer that I typically give is that is that we've faced humans have faced issues like this many, many times in the past, and For much of that time, it seems like nothing is happening. Right, we're not really caring about the environment, we're not doing anything about it.
Frank Turina:There are policies to protect things, and then things change quickly, right, they change fast. So you have these periods of not much happening and then, all of a sudden, these periods where things change overnight and you get these. You know they it's kind of an ecology and it's it's this idea of punctuated equilibrium, right. So you have these moments where nothing's happening and then the conditions align and then things happen really fast, and I think that that is what kind of gives me, encourages me, is I know that that's happened in the past and I know that we're getting to that tipping point where that has that has happened, and so I think in the next, you know, generation, we're going to see things change very quickly. Hopefully it's not too late, but but I think it's that's the. That's why it's important is kind of the study, the policy, to keep policy, you know, moving forward, because in it's some point when all the these things align, things can change really fast, and that's what I'm hoping for.
Bill McGeeney:Well, that's an excellent answer and now we're going to put it to test because we have technology. Technology does amazing things, but consumer technology right now is. We're at a An interesting point and, I'll be honest, I'm hearing echoes of the LED revolution in some of these news articles. I remember a decade ago the benefits of LED were being touted. It could, you know, reduce costs or reduce carbon impact. That would improve lighting, it would reduce light pollution, would be great for the environment. Now I say it definitely came through more efficient, but it doesn't do anything better for the environment. It doesn't do anything better for ecology in any way.
Bill McGeeney:For instance, take this, this whole goods ultra bright solar light that just came through one of my feeds a suppressor, right guys? This light aims to enhance outer spaces while promoting environmental consciousness by utilizing 432 LEDs to provide 2,500 lumens, presumably to ensure, dear, don't invade your garden. To really 2,500 lumens is on the extreme high end of the brightness scale. In Watts terms, that's comparable over 250 Watts. I'm not sure how lights like these aren't classified as nuisance lights, as I don't see utilitarian purpose outside of trying to irritate the living heck out of your neighbor and weaponized lighting. Bonus points to whole goods. They have the audacity shown artist rendering of these lights being utilized with starlit, dusky sky in the background. Or maybe that's the color of the night sky after you use them, I'm not sure.
Bill McGeeney:But let's take a little step back here. I went to my Harbor story yesterday a couple times because you know you never go just once you realize you need another stupid thing, you have to go right back out. And it's an old mom and pop. True value staff super knowledge will always very helpful. And I noticed that the only exterior lights they have where these always on motion detecting lights you know the ones talking about. They stay on at a dimmer light but they're always on and then again like ultra bright the moment anything a leaf goes in front of it.
Bill McGeeney:And then, if either of you guys have a ways camera I know I get this all the time you'll get ads for having new spotlight cameras because everything has to have a giant spotlight on it. So my question to you guys is are these these terrible fit? Well, I consider them terrible fictions. Other people may concern for useful fictions, but this is my perspective right here. Are they a product of the dog or is the tail wagging the dog? Who's who wants us more consumers or makers? Do we have any? Maybe this isn't the right panel to be asking about. I'm curious if you guys have any thoughts on that.
Ken Walczak:Yeah. So I just want to address, like what you said about LEDs, like they don't solve a problem on their own, but the technology is so workable. I mean think about compared to old Cobra head, hps, you know high pressure sodium lights, you know that light just goes everywhere and it's, you know that's pretty uncontrolled, it's like a sledgehammer of light. So you got LEDs, but they're so compact, their energy efficient, so there's a lot of benefits to get from my. My real ripe is with is they're not really being used to their potential. They they you can control the light they give off so well and in the last decade or so the color temperature has been gotten so much better, the amount of blue light they emit. So the technology is there, it's just now the design and the application needs to be done right.
Ken Walczak:And problem is, I think, to answer your question about the, the, the dog wagging the tail of the tail wagging the dog, I think it's both. I think manufacturers are just producing stuff that's cheap and it gives a lot of like and it's like if you want to buy something that lights up your yard, well, you want the most you can for your money, right? I mean that's kind of the thinking and so a lot of manufacturers just can spill out a light out in your backyard, no problem, maybe that's, that's cheap and easy to do. But then the consumer like they don't have a lot of choice because and maybe that's the only examples they've seen so it's I think it's a chicken and the egg thing, maybe the dog, the tail and more it's like chicken in the egg. Because if you don't have the option to get really good fixtures, really good light for whatever your purpose is, you're not even going to think about it as an option.
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, maybe maybe the narrative needs to change from, because I feel like brightness is the marketing phrase right, the marketing catchphrase you're looking for maybe needs to change over to, you know, neighborhood friendly or something like that, that kind of phrasing, because some of these fixtures, they really have no point except for the terrorizer neighbors they really are like, unless you're living in the boonies, there really are lights that are out just to weaponize lights. You can't tell me that a twenty five hundred lumen light on your side of your house, because right into your neighbor's house, isn't a weapon, that's weaponizing a light.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, yeah. I mean I don't understand how more people living next to those, those don't have more issues, you know, like how can there not be more complaints? I mean, I think there's going to be a tipping point where the use of these kind of lights is going to just drive so many people baddie that they're going to go. We got to be something about.
Bill McGeeney:Well, there was. We did have an article last month which discussed some nuisance lighting laws that were being put into effect in New Jersey. So it may, I suspect, to start seeing more of this stuff come up now that we have these fixtures and maybe we'll get a push towards more of a neighborhood friendly lighting. Which brings me to my next article here. The Washington Post had a great piece that started out by visually illustrating the effects of irresponsible lighting on Chilling County, washington, between twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. Chilling County sits on the eastern side of the Cascades. It began a one point nine million dollar LED streetlight conversion. Twenty eighteen retrofitted thirty six hundred high pressure sodium lights to a mix of three thousand four thousand Kelvin light fixtures, with the latter requirement by the Washington State Department of Transit Guidelines On a positive side, to convergence all real energy savings due to what the article sites as enough power to power up a hundred twenty all electric homes in the county for a year. On a negative side, whereas the high pressure sodium fixtures previously emitted two point three times the natural light level, they increased to three point six, nine times the natural light light level and skies actually got brighter, taking everyone by surprise. What ended up happening in Chilling County is probably what we see happening wherever LED streetlight conversions are taking place. When utilizing a four thousand Kelvin bulb, approximately twenty nine percent of the light emitted is blue. The blue light, due to a shorter wavelength, quickly scattered and impacted the horizon. And for those of you curious about the percentage for three thousand Kelvin lights, it's somewhere in a ballpark of twenty one percent.
Bill McGeeney:Here in Philly, the city just announced full replacement of all street lights with three thousand Kelvin fixtures over the next two years, which, of course, carlton Williams, the Department of Streets Commissioner, justified by blankly Using a supportive statements touting how these lights will naturally prevent violent crimes. And I'm curious, you two jets, if anyone wants to take a bet on how that turns out. The city here plans to utilize diffuse optics, which the claim is that this will reduce the brightness of the LED source. So I went back to one of our guests from last month to build green for more details on to understand how diffuse optics worked. Apparently, diffuse optics are a powder coating that obscures the LED bulbs. However, due to the nature of diffuse fixtures, more light may just end up going upward and not downward. To us credit, the city does claim that these are dark sky compliant fixtures.
Bill McGeeney:As a backstory, the most recent Acorn fixture conversion, the glassy fixtures they either dangle from or sit on top of single light poles appear to have been designed overly bright, which, in a similar way, the effect of having diffuse coating on those, those fixtures. So here, philly, I suspect many other urban areas are experiencing this. We have a firm belief that brighter safer, regardless of what the crime statistics tell you about daytime crimes. I surmise that there's multiple factors at play and they're just just helping to muddy the message as it goes out to two different news sources, but I want to toss this over to you guys. So what are your thoughts? What are some good examples of street lighting that we can actually use to show you can. You can responsibly light Cities, responsive, like maybe even major cities?
Ken Walczak:Well, first of all I want to talk about the Shilling County thing. Frank, were you involved in that? I don't know if it might have been.
Frank Turina:We were involved, I think. We did measurements for them, and it was right around the time I retired that that was coming to fruition, so I wasn't up to date on what the results from our work were.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, because I think this is the core of the story. To start with, because the National Park Service did as you guys, used your all-sky camera, measured the sky glow over Shilling County. They replaced lights, like you mentioned, and then they measured it again. But the I kind of earlier said about the growth in light pollution, research has been because of data and there's a satellite the instrument is called the Vier's instrument on the satellite that literally maps the nighttime of the earth at night, every night, and the problem is it doesn't see blue light.
Ken Walczak:So, according to the observations from the satellite, this retrofit, from these high pressure sodium lights that shine all directions to these well-shielded 3000, mostly 3000, there's some 4000 kid lights. You figure, oh, they're shielded, they're bluer but they're shielded. That should, and that's what the satellite saw. They said, hey, guess what? We don't see as much light coming out of this town, this county, but from the ground, the light, the sky glow, got brighter. So that was where we kind of say, uh-oh, if we're relying on these satellite images to gauge whether we're making an improvement, we've got to rethink that. So, frank, if you had any more to add to that, yeah, I think it's an important distinction with the satellite data.
Frank Turina:Yeah, from my understanding that you're right it doesn't see blue light but it's really sensitive to the amber-orange-reddish wavelengths. So when I mentioned before that the oil and gas field in North and South Carolina or North and South Dakota, looked huge, on the satellite data it looked as big as Chicago, but in reality it wasn't that bright. But it looked like that to the satellite because it was primarily gas-flaring, which is yellow and orange and red. So the satellite was more sensitive to that type of light emission than it was to Chicago. And so, yeah, it's an important point that the satellite data can be misleading and so really kind of seeing what the conditions are on the ground is really the way to kind of make sure that we're really seeing the real perfect.
Ken Walczak:So all right, do you want me to jump into the Philly thing?
Bill McGeeney:Yeah, let's do it, kim. It's now time, all right.
Ken Walczak:We just you know the Chicago over about two and a half years or so finishing up about two years ago or so did a retrofit of high pressure sodium to 3000K LEDs. We did like 300,000 of them, so that's about half of what Philly's doing. I mean, that's about half. Philly's doing about half of that, but it's still going to be big, and so I know what this can do to your communities because I've seen it firsthand. Now I just want to pull out a few things that were said by Philadelphia. One of them on their website said I'm going to quote it here said Philadelphia will replace all the cities 130,000 streetlights with energy efficient bulbs over the next two years, with the dual purpose of showering high crime neighborhoods in brighter light and cutting electricity use citywide. It's magic. I really worry about yes, I really worry about what they mean by showering high crime areas in brighter light. Let's talk environmental justice issues.
Bill McGeeney:I can tell you exactly what they mean because I've spoken to some of the people in the streets department, and Philly has to quote from Alan. We are stuck in a 20th century mindset for 21st century problems. Right, and the city really does believe that light can solve problems. They have people who are in the streets department. That is something they truly believe and they find it laughable that you could even suggest something otherwise. Regardless of daytime statistics, are there no crimes that happened during the daytime? Evidently I don't know. But yeah, so, Ken, I know you want to speak a little bit about social justice here. Feel free.
Ken Walczak:Yeah, I mean, you know there's a part of Dark Sky Chicago. We have our local chapter of Dark Sky International here and we get emails all the time from folks saying, hey, I got this problem in my neighborhood, can you help. And one of them went to this big parking lot of a it's actually a regional brewery and had their parking lot lights. Were these LEDs that were pointed sideways practically? You know they're supposed to be pointed down, these flat panel LEDs, and this is like what happens when lighting goes wrong. And the first thing I always do when someone has a problem like that is say like well, get some consensus, get some. I bet your neighbors are all feeling the same way. And he's like well, I don't know. I think I'm the only one who's thinking about this.
Ken Walczak:And I went to his neighborhood at night and literally took a photograph of every single house along that facing that parking lot. Every single one of them had everything from plastic bags to blackout curtains, to shades, to things put in their windows. And I said you have, everybody on your block feels the same way as you do. And you know, and that's the thing they don't have the choice of like they didn't even think that this was something that was in their power. And that's what happens. When a town says, all right, you know what, we're going to put really bright lights all over the place, they better be very concerned about splashing a lot of light in people's houses, because that's what's going to happen, and you know, don't even get me on the going on the correlation between light and crime.
Bill McGeeney:Well, let me, let me tell you probably this is what I survive. It's going on here that there's a couple of things that work. First off, there's a purchasing decision and trying to put a square peg into a round hole I think that's part of it. There was probably. This is all me just surmising stuff. I want to make sure I'm not you know, I'm not speaking for the city or for anything that they did.
Bill McGeeney:Second, they have we have a major crime problem and the city seems enough to actually solve the problem, and this is a way for them to look like they're actually doing something for the problem, and I don't think that's changing anytime. I don't think they're going to solve the crime problem anytime soon, and this is something that they can look proactive in doing, regardless if it prevents any crime or not. I don't know if they truly think it prevents crime. I can't speak for that, but the consensus from the people I've spoken with have made me feel that it's a foregone conclusion that light prevents crime. So that's what I surmise is going on. Okay, yes, yeah.
Ken Walczak:So just just to throw in an example here. So I did a study where I took this with ISS images, so at least we have the color information. I took a number of ISS images of Chicago and at night, did it. There's a neighborhood at the west side of Chicago which has a high crime rate and then literally right across the road is the town of Oak Park. Now I did an analysis where I said, okay, I'm going to take the exact foot of Oak Park and move that over. So I have the exact same size of neighborhood, almost exact same population.
Ken Walczak:The two the area of Austin in Chicago was almost two and a half times brighter than Oak Park, literally side by side. The crime rate was eight times higher. So if you're saying that the brighter light is preventing crime, it's not a crime. It's not because across the just literally across the street in Oak Park, where the lights are very dark compared to that neighborhood, the crime rate is eight times lower. So a city saying we're going to pump in a bunch of lights to fix the problem. All they're doing is putting a bandaid on something and saying that they, they solved the problem. So I would love to see the crime rates fall in Philly, definitely, but it's not going to be because of the light. Let's invest in the community, maybe. Yeah, I agree.
Bill McGeeney:I would love to see the crime rates. Crime rates fall here. Yeah, Like you say, it's like putting a bandaid on cancer.
Frank Turina:That's what you're doing.
Bill McGeeney:Hey, sticking to the streetlight theme, I do have some positive stories here, so I didn't mean to get us all down and being up here. We're going up and down a lot today. I was sticking close to the streetlight theme. The financial times put out a really interesting video Could new streetlights save our biodiversity? Whereby the article stresses that LEDs themselves, as you said, ken, they're really not the problem, rather the introduction of the blue wavelengths that we use into the night and effectively we're blinding insects like pollinating moths. New streetlight tests are underway in Germany. I want specifically designed street lamps that apparently have dramatically decreased, with they calling the vacuum cleaner effect that's a very nice term of trapping insects in a light field. Would that be something that would be pretty interesting? Have you guys seen any information on this besides the actual news clip?
Ken Walczak:I think I know the researchers yeah, they're working with this is the Z-Lux folks, I think, yeah, I mean it's kind of cool because they're a lot of thinking of it. Like this, you have a lighting company that wants to say, hey, can we design lights that are less ecologically impactful? And then they went to the researchers and say, oh, we, you know, like, for example, for bats, for example, we know which for the population of bats in this area, we know which parts of the spectrum affect them the most. So let's design a light that literally fits this environment, that would impact the least amount of these animals. Same thing with insects and things like that. So I think it's this this is like one of the you know, you're right An encouraging news story where you're like you know what, if, if research and our knowledge can go into work with industry, we could actually be producing some amazing, you know, future products.
Bill McGeeney:That's very inspirational man. I would love to see something like this actually get into industry. This is, you know, the promise of LEDs. I'll believe it. If something like this comes out, ken, I'll believe it. Well, before we go any further, we have our ecology and a really interesting special literature piece coming up. We're really close folks, but I and I I promise these guys I have them out in another 15 minutes, so so hopefully I can, we're going to get there. I know we are, it's not. Hopefully I know we're going to get there. I want to give a huge thank to my guest today, frank Terina and Ken Walcheck. Gentlemen, how can people best find out about what you're doing, any projects you're doing, or or what you might be, have your hand in?
Frank Turina:So so for me my main vehicle for staying involved in the the next guy world is my website, which is nice guy network. Got work and so feel free to that sort of where I do some blog posts and and kind of ruminate on night sky's issues and so and also sort of share some literature or some research. Research that kind of catches my eye and gives me a chance to kind of write on that and stay involved in the topic. So that's the best place to kind of figure out what's going on with me.
Bill McGeeney:And Frank, is that the same site that has all of your astrophotography?
Frank Turina:Yeah, so my, yeah, my, my night sky photography and my astrophotography is also linked there. And it's night sky resource centerorg.
Bill McGeeney:They're fantastic photos really really great work. Frank, they, they're spectacular. Anyone who loves great shots at night sky go to the website and definitely go to learn more, because it's just a great resource all around. Ken, how about you? Let's see.
Ken Walczak:So if you want to see what we're doing in Chicago, you can actually go to darkskychicagoorg. That's our local chapter of Dark Sky International. We're we're doing a lot. If you want post, we try to post the stories up there so you kind of see what's going on in our region. Also, if you want to see what we're doing at the Adler Planetarium, if you go to adlerplanetariumorg and just search for Far Horizons and it'll get you to the Far Horizons page where we see all the all the work we do with students and, and you know, in the research.
Bill McGeeney:What's some of the cool stuff you've done in Far Horizons.
Ken Walczak:Like I said, well, we've designed an instrument that we fly to the stratosphere to map light pollution across regions. That's pretty cool. That is cool yeah.
Bill McGeeney:And I'm waiting for you. You got to tell me what's going on down there in Palm Beach, florida, so I need to know.
Ken Walczak:I think our balloon won't go that far. That's fine, maybe we'll get there someday. One of the coolest things we did in the recent past is that there's a meteorite. That was a meteor that was seen over the Midwest and its flight trajectory was over, looked like it would would have. The debris field would have fallen in Lake Michigan, and so we, with a bunch of high school students, designed and built a mission to search the bottom of Lake Michigan and pick up meteorite fragments. We built a whole thing called Starfall. It's a it's a whole magnetic sled thing that was drawn by a boat. We ended up working with NOAA and NASA and the Shed Aquarium here in Chicago and a whole bunch of other people, and so, yeah, that sounds amazing.
Bill McGeeney:That's so I want to take. I want to become a high school kid again and go and join this program. That sounds great. I got my ride. See if you're, if you're aging, wow, oh man, ken. All right, well, let's finish this. Show up, shall we?
Bill McGeeney:On the ecology front, we continue to see strong amounts of research, as Ken alluded to earlier. There's no doubt that Allen affects behavior, so let's go through them, shall we? We have one article from Marine Pollution Bolton that looked at the decision making abilities of rockfish under light, under artificial light at night. The results indicate that fish exposed to Allen appear to avoid safe dark areas when presented with them, raising habitat risk. Another preliminary study from the environmental biology of fishes indicates that Allen changes forging behaviors of Japanese eels. Researchers use traps to catch eels, noticing in a control void of artificial light that eel catches peak the sunset. However, in the study area which utilized artificial light exposure, eel catch time was significantly delayed up to 120 minutes past sunset.
Bill McGeeney:From scientific reports, utilizing artificial light at night as a corollary for urbanization found that of 24 Australian raptor species looked at, 13 of them showed particular tolerance, positive responses to urban environments. Conversely, 11 of them showed avoidance to them, indicating some species are becoming more adapted to the urban setting than others. From the science of total environment, a study looking at dusk flying European night jars noticed that artificial light at night extended their nocturnal flight activity over that of a control group lacking artificial light at night. The reason cited appeared to initially be stemming from improved visibility from sky glow, but, more interestingly, the bright clouds from light pollution further increases activity versus the dark clouds of non-lit skies. And finally, alan may be affecting the cognitive function of birds. When a species, the great tits, were exposed to Alan, they failed to complete tests that were completed by the control population. And that comes to us from science of the total environment. Any other articles I missed out there, frank Ken, anything you guys want to chime in with?
Frank Turina:All right? No, I don't think so. Those are some really good ones. Some of them sort of reinforce some of the analyses that have been done in the past. I remember writing about another article on underwater light pollution basically, and that development on the shores of these estuaries were affecting the Bentay communities, basically the bottom dwelling communities in these estuaries, and the worst offenders were the blue and green wavelengths because they were scattered less by the water. Again, switching to LEDs we have that blue spike in the light emissions is potentially could affect offshore areas greater than the older LPS and other lower temperature lights. So I think so it's sort of repeating or confirming a lot of some of the studies that I've read about that issue.
Bill McGeeney:Excellent, thank you, frank. There's good editions right there, all right, so let's finish up the show, shall we? The last piece comes from a brilliant write-up in the hub entitled On the Rich and Radical History of Nightwalking. Few pieces of work effectively convey what I might call the spirituality of night. Bianca Gaevur's work does just that, referencing cultural experiences throughout history. For instance, during medieval Europe, people used the time between sleeps to read, pray and sometimes for traveling at night. And who knows, when you're best in a world of Christian mysticism, maybe even encounter God or Satan on your way to your next trip. During the Enlightenment, embracing the dark of night liberated one from the rigid rational world. And Gaevur goes on to mention that Dickens himself walked upwards of 25 miles on some nights. For black Americans, both pre and post civil war, walking at night proved challenging due to curfews put up in place by slave-owning Southerners or Jim Crow-minded communities. However, gaevur references the story of how Frederick Douglass' mother would walk from sun up to sun down to visit Frederick, who reside on different plantation, and I think I'd like to finish up today's show with this quote from Juno Chiro Ozaki from 1933. If light is scarce, then light is scarce, but the progressive Westerners determined to always better his lot. From candle to oil lamp to oil lamp to gas lamp, gas light to electric light, his quest for a brighter light never ceases. He spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.
Bill McGeeney:I want to thank my guests today Frank Tarina and Ken Walczyk. It's been great having you guys on. I always love these Sundays. I get to learn so much from guests I get to. Really it's just. It's just a great time and I really look forward to doing this again sometime in the near future with you. Gentlemen, as a reminder, if you're loving light pollution news, please share the show or maybe provide us a rating review wherever you listen podcast. If you're hating it and you've made this long congratulations. And please share it with your enemies. We love that. You can learn more about the show by heading over to light pollution news, where we have all the links that were mentioned in this show, and also tag us in something cool on Instagram at lightpollutionnews, or chime in on LinkedIn or Reddit at r slash light pollution news. It's been a great night. Thank you, listeners. We'll be back next month with a new episode. I'm your host, bill McGeaney, and remember to always let the light shine only where it's needed.