October 2024: Stargazing on the Bomber!

A lot to discuss this month! Host Bill McGeeney is joined by an expert panel featuring the astronomer and artist, Dr. Tyler Nordgren, photographer and Youtuber, Nico Carver, and, thought leader and CEO of Visibility Innovations, Nancy Clanton.

See Full Show Notes, Lighting Tips and more at LightPollutionNews.com. Like this episode, share it with a friend!

Bill's Picks:

• Teen Captures Jaw-Dropping Photo of North America Nebula From His Backyard, Lydia Patrick, Newsweek
  
  
• Turning down streetlights at night shown to reduce light pollution and carbon emissions, Victor Petrovic, ABC News (AU)
  
  
• Proposed LED streetlights are too bright, Ann Arbor dark sky proponents argue, Ryan Stanton, Mlive. 
  
  
• Researchers want to build 'streetlights' on the moon — and they'd be taller than the Statue of Liberty, Brandon Specktor, Live Science.
  
  
• Perseid meteor shower seen raining over Stonehenge in stunning photo, Li Cohen, CBS News

Chapters

• 24:15 Night Sky Curiosity and Growth
• 29:47 Lost Appreciation for the Night Sky
• 38:22 Preserving Dark Skies From Light Pollution
• 48:16 LED Street Light Brightness Discussion

Transcript

Bill McGeeney: 0:06

light pollution news october 2024, stargazing on the bomber. Today, does sky brightness affect our curiosity in a universe? What on earth is a lunar saber, and why is a town in michigan using wattage as a determining factor for its new led conversion? This month, I couldn't be more excited about this panel. We have Nebula Photo's own, nico Carver, the thought leader, nancy Clanton, an astronomer, science communicator, but you'll probably know him more for his posters. Mr Tyler Norgren, you'll definitely want to listen to this episode of Light Pollution News coming right up. Welcome to another episode of Light Pollution News.

Bill McGeeney: 0:54

Here on Light Pollution News, we try and explore stories in and around light pollution. I'm your host, bill McGeaney, thanking you for joining me once again. Light Pollution News is released twice a month, whereby I bring on three guests to join me in chatting about the month's news. Light Pollution News aims to build engagement and conversation around the topics affecting light pollution and further grow awareness on pertinent issues affecting our nighttime environments. Before we start things off today, for those of you who signed up for our mailing list, big news you can expect a large chunk of ecology articles in this month. As I did not have a chance, I didn't have enough space really to include them in this month's show. So if you're not part of the mailing list, no worries, you can quickly sign up and go over to our landing page on lightpollutionnewscom. It's a once a month mailer. We stick to that. We don't send it out twice a month. But in that once a month mailer you'll receive links to both months episodes right out of the gate. So instead of waiting two weeks for second half, you will get it right there. And then also, as a reminder, anything talked about on the show we'll have a link over in the episode page at lifelusionnewscom. I hear anything. You have questions or simply you want to provide some feedback. Feel free to text the show at the link at the very top of today's show notes. You will not incur any fees when texting. If texting ain't your thing, why not reach out to us via Instagram, facebook, linkedin, or you could also email me directly at billlightpollutionnewscom.

Bill McGeeney: 2:20

Lastly, did you know you can share parts of the show with friends, co-workers or really anyone else? On Instagram and Facebook we provide bite-sized reels featuring important points that our guests make, and over on LinkedIn we post all the articles talked about in the show for you to share amongst your contacts. So why not help build awareness? And if you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to the show via whatever podcast player you're listening to or you're listening from. I should say, and, as always, a rating and review really do go a long way. The show has an embarrassingly low amount of ratings and reviews. Sure, would be nice if we could up that count somehow. We appreciate any five-star rating and review that you feel compelled to provide. No pressure there. This month I'm extremely excited to have three guests with me, all of whom, I think, it's safe to say, have had an impact in their own way, even if it's not necessarily in this direct topic of light pollution.

Bill McGeeney: 3:14

First up, I think many of you will know this guy Two books, right, tyler, you had two books. Two books Stars Above, earth Below, a Guide to Astronomy and National Parks, and the Sun, moon, earth, the History of Solar Eclipses, from Omens of Doom to Einstein, and Exoplanets. And if that doesn't ring a bell, what about this trademark approach to infusing astro-related themes? Probably not trademarked, but you get the idea. He has these national park posters and today we're going to be actually talking with the first ever grand canyon national park astronomer and residents. How cool gig. Where do you get these gigs, tyler? This is incredible.

Tyler Nordgren: 3:57

back in 2021, you had to suffer through, I guess, a year at the grand canyon oh, I'll be absolutely, but I've been working with the Park Service to promote astronomy and night sky in the national parks going all the way back to 2007,. 2005 even and I can trace it all back to when I was an astronomer in Flagstaff. I went out to Chaco Canyon on a vacation and I saw a poster for sabbatical in the parks, and when I got my faculty job in California I resolved okay, when I get that for sabbatical, I'm spending it with the park service, and it just changed my life and so I've been very lucky to do things like that astronomer in residence gig.

Bill McGeeney: 4:40

Oh, that that's seems like one of the coolest things. It's. We'll get to some of these things. I want to show you this. So I, we met 14 years ago randomly for five seconds I think out at alcon in bryce canyon and I still have this. It's been up on a wall for a long time and I think he even signed it over here. It's a little faded. It's been up on the wall and, yes, it's the milky way from bryce Canyon. This poster has been a inspiration to me. So I really appreciate just you making those posters. I hope it's been an inspiration to others, but that every day you know you look at it, you, you wonder and you just it keeps the Milky Way, keeps that stuff on your mind it's one of the things that I never expected when I wrote that first book Stars Above Earth Below.

Tyler Nordgren: 5:23

It was part of that sabbatical in the parks and just because I was poor and I needed illustrations, I thought, oh, I can draw, let me draw one of these old Works Progress Administration posters you know those See America posters that are so associated with parks. Let me just draw one that instead says instead of See America, it's See the Milky Way. And then I came up with the slogan half the park is after dark. That actually is trademarked, and who knew that would become the thing that would capture the public's imagination? Park rangers asked me to draw posters for their parks. I think I have over a hundred or so that I've done at this point. And it just blew up far more than I could ever imagine. And it's far and wide. I love running into people. I said, oh, you're the one that does those. I've got six of them. So I thank you. I I'm glad you still have that. I still have.

Bill McGeeney: 6:15

And I love the fact that, just because you were probably a poor postdoc right, and it's not anything you're trained in this is what most people probably recognize you for is. Is this thing right here?

Tyler Nordgren: 6:27

oh, I, absolutely. Yeah, I the. The book was popular, but that artwork that, that just I. I wound up getting asked to design the uh poster for president obama's astronomy in the white house night, so those posters have gone all the way to the white house. I wound up doing posters for the last two total solar eclipses in 2017 and 2024. They're being collected by the smithsonian air and space museum. So you know who? Who am I? Some phd in astronomy who wound up getting into the smithsonian for my artwork. You couldn't make that up there you go.

Bill McGeeney: 7:03

Yep, I love it. And you, you got a lot going on, man, you, you gotta tell me the story about the chocolate, but why don't you tell us some of these, these events you got coming up?

Tyler Nordgren: 7:12

so, okay, yeah, so there's a chocolate. Uh, dandelion chocolates out in san francisco does an advent calendar each year and the theme of it for the last two years has been dark skies and national parks, so last year I did all the artwork for it. For the last two years has been dark skies and national parks, so last year I did all the artwork for each of the ornaments for each night. This year I didn't do the drawings, but I wrote the info, picked the parks and then just recorded a bunch of videos for each night talking about these dark sky parks and why they're associated with a particular day, a thing that you can see in the sky, and then potentially even a local chocolatier. So there's that. I'm going off to Antarctica in March of next year in order to see, hopefully, the southern lights during new moon in a place with really the least amount of light pollution in the world. So yeah, it's been fun and I'm really looking forward to this next year.

Bill McGeeney: 8:07

How do we find out about that chocolate? Is it? Can we just go to dandelion chocolatescom or whatever?

Tyler Nordgren: 8:12

And that's it Exactly. Yep, and you can. You can place orders there and I encourage folks to, if you're at all interested. They are not cheap. They're like about $300 a piece, Um, but if you. But if you are. The only way I can afford this is I get a free one by doing all of this work. But if you're at all interested, order early. Those things sell out. I could not buy one for my parents last year, Okay.

Bill McGeeney: 8:38

Keep that in mind. How about the cruise? Does that sell out fast? I guess that probably sells out in a day or so too.

Tyler Nordgren: 8:48

So Oceanwide Expeditions they're the company I'm working with and I think there's still spots available on that. We planned it specifically to be during solar maximum, around the equinoxes, when it gets dark at new moon, so that we've got as moonless a night as possible, and we're going to be down there below the Arctic Circle. We're going to go down as far south as we can in order to, if there are any auroral events, coronal mass ejections. We're going to be down there for almost two weeks and so odds are hoping we get at least one night where we see something.

Bill McGeeney: 9:19

Well, be sure to take the chocolates down when you go. You've got to be eating those chocolates when you have the Southern Lights going that big Next up because we have other guests. I feel it's tough to follow up with. Tyler, I have a name that many of you especially if you're in the astrophotography or remotely in the astrophotography in my mind Nico. I don't know how you see yourself, but I feel, after watching so many YouTube videos when starting out, that you kind of are like godfather of astrophotography. You're the one who's been able to level set and really explain some of the more technical aspects of cameras and how to use them and what to do, just starting out, even when I started out DSLRs. I want to welcome the creator of Nebula Photos, the YouTube channel, nico Carver.

Nico Carver: 10:06

Well, thank you, bill, I appreciate that.

Nico Carver: 10:08

Yeah, I mean, I got into astronomy through photography and I think that that's becoming less unusual.

Nico Carver: 10:17

When I started 10 years ago, I feel like most people were sort of already into astronomy and telescopes and the astro clubs, and then maybe we're adding on photography.

Nico Carver: 10:26

But I think nowadays maybe more people are already photographers and then they're interested in, well, taking pictures of it and just amazed at the differences between what a camera can see with a long exposure versus what our eyes can see, and just thinking about all the different colors and things that are there but we can't, that are invisible to our eyes. So that's sort of how I got started in it and then went on to Milky Way and other kinds of night sky photography and then eventually deep sky photography, which means, you know, taking pictures of things outside of our solar system, like nebulae and other galaxies, and I think that's approaching that with beginner gear is sort of how my YouTube channel took off, because I think a lot of people think you need a really fancy telescope to do that kind of thing, when actually you can do it with pretty normal photography gear. It's more just about learning the skills to do it.

Bill McGeeney: 11:30

Exactly, and I think that for me that was incredibly helpful. You had a recent video on this and I was taking shots doing just some star trails and I think I captured the nebulosity right there at Polaris and I didn't even realize it and I thought it was just some kind of weird artifact that was going on with the Star Trails. After watching your recent video on that little Polaris nebulosity in there, I really think it's that If you have any interest in astrophotography, you've got to go over to Nebula Photos. So thank you for that video, Nico, because I thought I was just a bad photo processor.

Nico Carver: 12:06

Yeah, a lot of people don't know that there's all this dust right around the star Polaris, and I mean, actually even professional astronomers didn't know until we had photography, because it's not something you can see with the naked eye.

Nico Carver: 12:17

But once they started doing the all-sky surveys of the night sky with Palomar and these big telescopes and they were taking them on these big glass plates, they started analyzing those and seeing oh wow, there's just dust everywhere in the Milky Way and right around Polaris there's a particularly interesting big dust cloud, and it's interesting because it's at what's called high galactic latitude, so it's not right within the plane of the Milky Way, it's sort of like above it. And so one thing I was thinking of was like calling that video like the clouds above our galaxy or something. But I ended up just going with the more, just like how to photograph it, because with these videos you're always thinking about like well, what am I really trying to get at? And I really wanted to explain to people, even though this is thought of as a difficult object because it's a very dim dust cloud, you can actually do it with just a DSLR and lens. You don't even need a star tracker.

Bill McGeeney: 13:13

And you can do amazing stuff with DSLR and lens. I know a recent guy in our club who picked out all of the nebulae, including the crescent, right Over in Cygnus.

Nico Carver: 13:23

Yeah, the Cygnus, um yeah, so yeah, the cygnus is amazing, it's chock full of yeah, yeah, yeah, and when he pulled it out, it was impressive.

Bill McGeeney: 13:30

Yeah, I mean, I'm completely unrealistic to the normal eye, right, but when you're looking at it not having any astrophotography gear per se when I think of that, I think of you know, it's on a telescope, it's, you know, doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Now he's just tracking with a star tracker, right, and he's just taking long exposures and I think his battery died like halfway through it and it's still look great. It's quite amazing.

Nico Carver: 13:53

Yeah, our eyes are sort of like more akin to video cameras, like they're refreshing very quickly. Well, camera, you can do the long exposure and just capture so many more photons and reveal so much more that's out there. So it's like I'm always telling people who are sort of new to astrophotography when you look up at the night sky, you see all these stars, but you don't see all the nebulae. But they're out there. They're just so much dimmer than the stars and the camera can see them.

Bill McGeeney: 14:20

So I want to question you on the processing here. So I want to question you on the processing here. When you process Milky Way shots, do you prefer to do grand, nebulous shots or do you prefer to do more naked eye kind of realistic, what you would see shots?

Nico Carver: 14:38

I don't do the what you see shots. I do definitely the more artistic what the camera can see kind of shots yeah, which in terms of, like you know, selling art or something it doesn't sell very well because people don't see that right Like they maybe don't have the context for it. We have the context for things like the Milky Way, maybe if you've been to a dark sky or the moon or the sun, but we don't really have the context for some of these really beautiful galaxies and nebulae or the moon or the sun. But we don't really have the context for some of these really beautiful galaxies and nebulae. So I think it's harder for people to connect to it necessarily. But for me, as soon as I saw those kinds of pictures and realized that like normal people can take them, I was just hooked and it's always been sort of my artistic focus is the more invisible stuff out in the night sky, yeah, yeah, it is impressive and I know I love seeing it.

Bill McGeeney: 15:29

I love seeing the shots that you're talking about and having it where it's very enhanced right. And the reason I bring it up is because I started out as I'm an amateur astronomer and I started out in visual and the other guys I know that do visual or like visual first and then have moved on to do photography as well. We all kind of come at the base of how do we make this realistic. And then our friends who are photography first, they come at the base of how do I make this artistic?

Nico Carver: 15:59

Yes, and it's just Sure. Yeah, and I not only come from the photography world, but my father and my grandfather were artists. My dad owned an art gallery, so it's just like I'm steeped more in sort of the art tradition than the astronomy tradition, for sure.

Bill McGeeney: 16:16

Okay, Our last guest here and Nancy, you are not outclassed here. You're just going to be providing us levity when we start going off the deep end a little bit. Finally, we have someone who is actually very important to the articles we speak of today, especially some of the more technical ones. We have the co-chair of Dark Sky's technical committee, a former chair of the IES Lighting for Nighttime Environments Committee, the recipient of the 2023 Dark Sky International Crawford Hunter Lifetime Achievement Award the list keeps going on and you're a CEO of Visibility Innovations, a lighting design company that applies sustainable and regenerative design practices to society's lighting needs. I think there's even more here. Nancy, welcome to Light Pollution News. Very glad you could join us today.

Nancy Clanton: 17:02

So I'll tell you, I wish I knew astronomy like Nico and Tyler do. Oh, my goodness, Tyler, I actually was in the Grand Canyon National Park way, way back and did the Grand Canyon National Park management plan so many years ago. And, meeting with the indigenous peoples down there and going to see what they saw, my heart just went out to them and I went we've got to do it. We can only light the Grand Canyon, and we tried it and we did it to no more than two moonlights for pedestrian walkways, and it can be done. It can definitely be done. I'm kind of here on earth trying to help you all out. Yeah, so I'm just like I'm the one who's trying to limit all the garbage that's going up into the sky. In fact, my dream is that EPA would actually look at light pollution as real pollution from the effects of what it's doing here on earth and everywhere else. So I'm in awe. Thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me to this.

Bill McGeeney: 18:15

Yeah, and this is a. This is a great career right here, because we have a little bit on the art side, we have a little bit on the technical side and we have a lot of overlap in between. So really, thank you three for joining me today. Let's jump into it. Came across an article in Newsweek I doubt any of you saw it A 17-year-old by name of Rudy Siggs captured the North American Nebula. We're just talking about this, nico. We're just talking about exactly what he's doing here. Siggs became a Reddit darling for a shot, and Newsweek featured his astrophotography. It's not the first time they did it. In 2022, they featured a shot of the Andromeda Galaxy. Why is art, why is astrophotography, so important in telling the story of the nighttime sky?

Nico Carver: 18:58

I think in that case it's sort of a it's a connection point where it's like knowing that a teenager can take photos like that it makes people think whoa, really how. And then could I do it too? And that's sort of how I got popular online as well is just sort of showing oh, this is possible. Because I think a lot of people don't realize that you can have this connection to outer space. They think those kinds of photos are only taken by the more professional telescopes outer space.

Bill McGeeney: 19:25

they think those kinds of photos are only taken by the more professional telescopes, these huge, massive telescopes that cost billions of dollars to ship up through orbit. And I mean, you're probably not taking James Webb style photos.

Nico Carver: 19:34

Exactly, and a criticism you know I often get leveled at me is why? Why would you do this when we have James Webb and we have Hubble? And I'm like you just got to try it because it's for a lot of us it's just really fun, it is a hobby, it's something that you get out under the night sky and adding in the taking pictures part is just really fun for us. So just like looking through a telescope. For us it's just a little bit more fun to take the pictures. So it's not really about competing with Hubble or James Webb, it's about doing it yourself.

Bill McGeeney: 20:05

They ask you why. But what did you used to take before you did any astrophotography? What do you still take during the daytime?

Nico Carver: 20:17

Oh, I was really into time-lapse photography, which has a lot of sort of similarities to astrophotography, because in both cases you're taking a sequence of photos, so it's sort of let in. But yeah, when I was out in Iceland, that's what I was really into was like time-lapse, so just to like show the flow of a river or a waterfall or something like that. And then I was doing time-lapse of the Aurora to show the motion of that.

Bill McGeeney: 20:36

I mean, that's the same question that you could ask about anyone who does any kind of photography, right, you don't really need to go go anywhere. I know my wife does a lot of birding and I like to do photography, so I take the camera with me and it becomes a challenge to try and get these birds. But like, I can just get a picture of that anywhere, that bird, right. But I think there's something that feels like you're actually the one who is, I don't say, painting the picture, but you're the one who's directly engaging with the subject, right versus if you look at something, you see it and you're very passive about it.

Bill McGeeney: 21:10

But when you're looking at that photo, you're sorting through your photos, trying to clean it up, edit it down, and you notice little nuances, little details that you would never have seen if you're just passively looking at it, right?

Nico Carver: 21:23

Yeah, and I think another point I'd make is when I started, I had never looked through a telescope and been able to see a nebula. I know that you can do that, of course, and you're a visual astronomer, so you've done that many times.

Bill McGeeney: 21:35

Oh, it's so cool, but I had never done anything like that.

Nico Carver: 21:36

So when I took a picture of the Orion Nebula and saw it on the DSLR screen, I was like it felt so much more real because I just took that picture and now I can see it. So I think that connection you can't really recreate just by seeing a photo of something like this in a book or on a website.

Bill McGeeney: 21:59

Doing it yourself. Being there under the night sky really makes the connection feel a lot more real. Yeah, I think that's one of those objects, kind of like Saturn, where the first time you see it because it's very easy to find or very easy to see it gets you hooked. At least it got me hooked. So I will note that Rudyy's username is huge regular underscore ad 48 58. My username on reddit is expense underscore ad underscore 50 89. I believe it was in response initially, way back when, to some ad. Maybe I guess I just hit. I never knew how to change that. If anyone can help me there, that'd be. But I don't feel so bad about my username anymore. Tyler, I see you jumping over there.

Tyler Nordgren: 22:36

Yeah, these last 20, 24 years have been just unprecedented in the degree to which camera technology has changed and allowed us to photograph the night sky, do night sky photography, and so I, when I first started working with parks back in 2005, there'd be. There was like maybe one guy out there, wally Pahulka, who was doing any kind of night skies over national parks, photographs and, and now, thanks to digital photography, he was doing film and now do. Thanks to digital photography, you can get, go online and you can find the. The national parks.

Tyler Nordgren: 23:11

Parks put this on their pages the Milky Way over the Grand Canyon, for instance and so the average public has been just absolutely overwhelmed with these amazing photographs of the Milky Way, and one of the things that rangers say is you don't appreciate things that you've never seen.

Tyler Nordgren: 23:30

So when you see things, you want to appreciate it and you want to protect things that you've never seen. So when you see things, you want to appreciate it and you want to protect it and you care about it. So having these photos out there has really driven an interest in the night sky and the general public, and there's a long history of stuff like this. You can go back to Thomas Moran and the first expedition out to Yellowstone in 1872. And he came back and his masterwork of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that hung in the Capitol. People all over the East Coast saw this and were like, wow, what's that? And, no coincidence, yellowstone became a national park a year later. What people see, what people love and appreciate, they want to protect, and we're just, we're seeing that continue to the night sky today. That's an excellent point.

Bill McGeeney: 24:15

And we saw astrophotography really take off during the pandemic. And I think, Nico, do you think it's still a growing market or do you think it's kind of leveled off or maybe even shrunk a little?

Nico Carver: 24:25

I think during the pandemic is when my YouTube channel really took off and I think it's because people were looking for hobbies and things to do during like the lockdowns and everything. So it's leveled off compared to that, but if we compare it to where it was before COVID, it's still increasing a lot and much higher. So I think, yeah, I think it's going to continue to grow. I'm now doing it full time and it's weird to sort of think that it's sort of thanks to the pandemic, because usually, you know, we think of everything negative with the pandemic. But I feel like something about that made people more interested in astrophotography and that's how I sort of have been able to make this my full-time gig.

Bill McGeeney: 25:08

I mean, the pandemic got me back into what we're doing right here. I always, you know, as an amateur astronomer, I always knew about light pollution, but I never thought about the impacts I had on anything but astronomers right, and once I started digging in, that's where I wanted to understand more and that's how I got to the show. But yeah, and I want to say something, nico, I think you mentioned about never seeing, or not initially seeing, nebulas in a telescope, and I think visual seeing something with your own eyes still is always going to be more impressive than an image. And it's not saying images aren't bad, because I'm right there with you, I love doing photography and astrophotography and I have them astrophotography and I haven't. But being able to just to something about your brain processing like that literal photon coming in, kind of like seeing you know anything in a wild, it's really impressive and and that's something that not many people have had the privilege to see- Something I'm always telling people that's sort of interesting to me about astrophotography and I don't.

Nico Carver: 26:08

I'm going to try to not make this too technical, but probably your audience knows the bordeaux scale, so the basically a bordeaux one sky is. The is the darkest skies on earth and bordeaux nine is like a city sky. For photography there's not a huge difference between like bordeaux one, two, three, even up to four, but for eyes there's a huge difference and, like when I first saw the Milky Way under a Bortle 1 sky, that is like a. Definitely up there is one of like the most life-changing kind of things.

Nico Carver: 26:40

I've ever seen. There's a huge difference to the eye, I think, between a Bortle 1 and like a Bortle 3 sky, because you just start seeing all of these amazing things in the Milky Way, like all the dark nebulae have sharper outlines, and you just start seeing all of these amazing things in the Milky Way, like all the dark nebulae have sharper outlines, and you just see all this cool stuff that you just can. I don't know and, but like Tyler was saying, it's like I feel like you have to sort of be in the hobby a while to start appreciating it, because it's like I don't. I don't know if I, if I had seen that right away and I didn't know what to expect to some degree I don't know if my brain would have been like trained to really appreciate it as much as I did when I finally got to a portal one sky, cause I started this whole hobby under a city sky and really portal nine, you know where you see a few stars.

Bill McGeeney: 27:24

Yeah, I mean, that's that's where I live in portal eight. So I totally. I think I counted about 150 stars last year. I think we're down probably to 80 this year. But the weather conditions, that's another piece. The humidity has been very high on the East Coast this year.

Bill McGeeney: 27:41

All right, staying on topic, Some truly inspiring nighttime shots. I think you might have seen a show release. We just did a couple weeks ago back with Josh Dury, and Josh Dury provided a really cool satellite image shot that we use for the show release. Well, he actually was in a news CBS news for one of the most stunning images of the Perseid meteor shower that I've ever seen. For you at home the image it's a composition and it has the Milky Way spine cutting down through the center, directly over top of Stonehenge. Meteors bow out from the Milky Way as they rain down to the ground.

Bill McGeeney: 28:16

Josh was on a couple months back and he stated that the night sky drives his curiosity dating back to a young age. That's a lot for all of us here and I know, when I look back in my life, vividly recall watching stars roll over the sky and seeing Saturn for the first time. But then there's a lot of curiosity. Like my first Iridium flare. I thought was a UFO. Right, you have this satellite coming at you, real bright, bright, bright, bright, and it's dark all of a sudden. Tyler, do you see this growth in curiosity? Is light pollution getting people down about astronomy?

Tyler Nordgren: 28:49

I've seen such a huge change since I've started working with the public back in, I think, 2007, when I was on that sabbatical at the Park Service. It's amongst both the public, but also, in the case here, with the National Park Service itself. I recall I did a month out at Arches National Park and the first day I met the superintendent and I still recall his question to me was what does astronomy have to do with Arches? Why are you here? And you know you had to sort of justify yourself. And I remember one of the things every single clear night I went out into the park trying to capture photographs for this book that I was going to do, and you could go to Delicate Arch and you'd be shoulder to shoulder with people at sunset, all the photographers getting that sunset photo of Delicate Arch. And the instant the sun was down they left and you had the place to yourself. And so one of the things I told the public back in that early era, way back when, was that to go out and be under the sky was to experience the national parks, maybe like the way they were back in the 1930s, the and like Ansel Adams would, all right, fast forward 20 years and you go out to some parks and you can stand in those places that used to be empty at night and now they are shoulder to shoulder with photographers getting those astrophotos.

Tyler Nordgren: 30:16

And I still recall I think it was for the Grand Canyon Star Party, where the superintendent was there giving a talk, and the superintendent came out to address the astronomers and he started out by saying you know, I'm so glad to have you all here because you know, half the park is after dark and I think, ok, I just had the superintendent of Grand Canyon quote me back to myself, but that's the degree toth anniversary and dedicated a list of 100 priorities for the next century. Starry skies was in the top 10. So the change has happened. We're on that wave and people are aware of it. She did was just crucial to Grand Canyon becoming a much better park at night and fixing their views so that people could easily go out and see the stars, because that is one of the things that they now go to national parks to see. It's not just grizzly bears and glaciers, it is seeing a star-filled sky.

Bill McGeeney: 31:28

I have a question. You guys later in the show on astrophotography or, I'm sorry, astrotourism, and I think that kind of meshes in there. Really well, nico, I'm just curious about your thoughts on this too. For photography, obviously, you're seeing the increase. I don't know how much you do you ever deal with just amateur astronomers or people who, let me put it this way, people who are curious about the sky?

Nico Carver: 31:53

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm a member of a number of astronomy clubs over the years and a number of them told me that they've, since 2020 especially, they've just seen huge increases in membership and people coming to star parties. Oh yeah, star parties. I'm like it's amazing how quickly they're selling out. Now it's hard to even keep up with the demand. Cherry Springs sells out in minutes. It's a famous one out here on the East Coast. Yeah, it's like so. Yeah, I think there is a lot more interest in the night sky than ever before.

Bill McGeeney: 32:26

It's a very weird world we live in at the moment To see, you know, one one regards so many people see absolutely nothing. Another regard there appears to be so much curiosity, just build up curiosity. So, speaking of which? Cell phones have come a long way since even you started your channel, nico. There's the Google pixel, which has been leading the way for nighttime photography for some time. They have a new update out where you can actually manually control the Astro mode. Do you think cell phone photography will ever reach the level that you have in your standard camera photography?

Nico Carver: 33:03

Well, there's some limitations. If you want to keep the cell phone thin, right, you can't. You could maybe attach a bigger lens or telescope to it, and a lot of people do that. They attach their cell phone to the eyepiece of a telescope. But if you're just talking about the cell phone itself, there's always going to be some limitations. But I think, in terms of some of the grandest things that we can take pictures of the Milky Way and then, recently, aurora I think a lot of people have been amazed at what they can capture in terms of their Aurora Borealis with their phone.

Nico Carver: 33:37

I was out in Wisconsin with my mom and dad just in August and there was this. There was this big Aurora show. It was one of those ones where it was like it takes over the entire sky. There's a crown at the top and everything. And I said to my mom yeah, try just taking a picture with your cell phone. And she did it. It was like a three second picture. The cell phones these days just automatically know when to do a long exposure. And she was amazed at all of the colors, all the pinks and everything that she couldn't see. So I think, yeah, there's certain things that cell phones are just going to be about as good as a DSLR at. We're probably already there with Aurora.

Bill McGeeney: 34:14

That's so cool. I've never seen Aurora. I would love to see one. It's always cloudy.

Nico Carver: 34:19

Now is a good time, it's been popping up a lot this year and it gets to pretty far southern latitudes. People have been taking pictures of it as far as Florida, as far south.

Bill McGeeney: 34:29

Yeah, yeah, I've missed each one. I'm doing good keeping my average. Good for you at home who might not be aware. This next piece you guys. I know, tyler, you know of the astronomical league, nico, I assume you do. Nancy has no idea what we're talking about here, but oh, nope, I don't. I'll fill you guys in on this, because you're home may not either.

Bill McGeeney: 34:48

So it's kind of think of it as kind of like a scout's handbook for all things astronomy related. I think that's the best way to put it. They provide all these merit-based observing lists that really help amateur astronomers, casual star watchers, people who are interested in the moon to learn all about these different objects out there. And actually, as of this recording, I'm a representative with the AL. I'm not really sure that fully entails yet I'm learning, but I was talking about the AL not to really give them a plug, but I recently I've done a number of these. I've been doing some and I know listeners. You guys know I just got done doing the asterisms list, which was a blast, a really fun way to engage with the night sky. And then here's another one I started doing was the Obscure Constellations, which also includes multicultural constellations.

Bill McGeeney: 35:39

Well, we have a story with this lady. Crystal DeNapoli, an Australian astrophysicist, found refuge in the stars when her mother, an Aboriginal woman, unexpectedly passed. Denapoli now believes that under the persistence of light pollution, something as bright and as well-known as the Pleiades may become covered by sky glow an asterism for her and her mother, which shared a mother-daughter connection that she always thinks of Separately halfway around the world. Brad Tucker, in a conversation, rehashes the history of light pollution way around the world. Brad Tucker in a conversation rehashes the history of light pollution Starting way back in 1917, the French astronomer Guillaume Begaudon I hopefully am getting ballpark close there mentioned seeing the summer Milky Way in Paris.

Bill McGeeney: 36:23

Thereafter, nighttime began to quickly fade from human consciousness. To this point there's a very astute comment by Leanne Henyon of the American Scholar that tees us up. So during the Victorian times, henyon alludes that the darkness of night was not seen as the other. Rather it was the endless 24-7 that was seen as foreign. So our understanding of having the endless day was quite foreign. And I actually just did a talk in front of some kids there and I told them that and they looked at me with awe that you had actual darkness at night, so that endless light can really travel, and Tucker estimated that the sky glow from Sydney actually extends upwards of 280 miles away.

Bill McGeeney: 37:09

But who cares? Well, dana Pauly for one, and it's not just because he's an astrophysicist. The sky represents a collection of histories for all of society, and even though many of us in the West have long since given up on reading them. And more importantly, from where I began this little anecdotal story, those are often histories hidden under the confines of constellations, and it's not just the lit avenues of the stars that form humanity's connection to the sky, but those dark regions made up of gas and dust in between. And here aboriginal constellations such as the kangaroo, emu, a snake and crocodile reside. Tyler, I'm going to shoot this one over to you. We have so much human consciousness sitting in a night sky. Why are us Westerners often so oblivious to appreciating it? Where did it all go?

Tyler Nordgren: 37:58

Well, I mean, the problem is that, yeah, it went away behind this artificial daylight of our own creation. But the key is it happened slowly and so we never really realized it was going until it was already gone. And by the time it's gone, you've got generations that have never known the night sky. I was an astronomer out in Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, arizona, where you could stand on the street corner downtown on Route 66 and see the Milky Way overhead. And when I became a professor out in Southern California, I recall that that first night I was supposed to teach an evening astronomy class. And I'm there in the great Los Angeles metro area and I look up and I can literally count 12 stars in the sky and one of those is on approach to LAX. Okay, so I mean that that was the moment where I realized just viscerally that we had lost something. And as I would start giving talks, people would come up to me and it was the, the, the older folks who were like on. I remember a navigator on a B-17 during World War II saying he used to do stargazing from that glass dome on the bomber and now it's all gone. And again, where did it go? And yeah, we lost it, one light bulb at a time, and we didn't value it enough.

Tyler Nordgren: 39:25

And I think this is going back to what you're talking about with Western culture. So much of our history, mythology, fairy tales I mean. How many fairy tales involve wolves or evil witches in the woods coming and stealing children away? So you know, there was this, this feeling that the, the dark night sky, was, was something to be afraid of and needed to be tamed, pushed, pushed back and made safe. And you know, once, once you then get into the industrial revolution and suddenly we're building things and electrifying things. Hey, we don't ever have to suffer under that darkness again, and well, we don't anymore.

Bill McGeeney: 40:05

A depressing story there.

Tyler Nordgren: 40:08

Sorry about that. One quick flip side to that In 2014, I was out in Holbrook, arizona, again out on Route 66, on my way to a park, and I spent the night out at the Wigwam Motel. And so it was these old Route 66 teepees and this was dark as dark could possibly be the person working behind the counter that there was another wigwam motel that was in Los Angeles, but we couldn't see the stars at all. So I was so glad to be there and that the person was confused I can't see the stars. What do you mean? So even folks that still have the luxury of stars don't realize that it's being lost in other places.

Nico Carver: 40:47

So you know, there's, there's the job for the current generation is to preserve those last few places and make the folks who live trying to fight against the light pollution and like and sort of take back the night sky in a way was the.

Nancy Clanton: 41:28

You know, he was in Tucson, arizona, working at the observatory there and he joined a committee that was the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America very technical and he went I'm losing our observations of the sky because of all of the streetlights in Tucson and he said don't fight them, join them. So he came to IES and said let's start looking at ways of reducing light pollution. So, tyler, you may know when that was. I think it was back in the 80s when that all occurred. I think it was back in the 80s when that all occurred. But I just was blown away by Dave's commitment to this and I went. Well, I'm a lighting designer, an engineer, I want to help. So that's when I first noticed it was through Dave Crawford, I'm sure it was way before that.

Tyler Nordgren: 42:30

Yeah, there were astronomers at observatories and this goes back 100 years at least who noticed that the skies at their observatories were getting a little brighter, and so you had places like the US Naval Observatory in DC that used to have their observatory right there it's the grounds of the Vice President's house and they moved eventually out to Flagstaff. You had observatories national observatories in Mexico and Paris and in Greenwich, who kept having to move their observatories further and further away, but it was around, yeah, the 1970s 1980s is when astronomers began to really say, hey, wait a second, this isn't just at our observatories, this is a larger issue that is going to get worse everywhere.

Bill McGeeney: 43:18

And so, yeah, you're absolutely right, Because Nico, really you see this when you go. I assume, depending where you're at in New Hampshire, you're probably seeing a slow degradation. Pretty well, it's not that slow anymore, right? Oh yeah, yeah.

Nico Carver: 43:32

So I moved from Bostonoston to new hampshire for darker skies. So I and it's funny, you sort of you, you, when I picked the spot, I wanted to pick a spot where I'm like I don't think people are going to want to develop here. You know, it's sort of it's a weird thing to think about but as an astronomer that's pretty important because you never know, like you said, like if a new big development comes in a new town or a bunch of new stores and things that have all the outdoor lighting, I know that the skies would degrade very quickly and I've heard from me amateur astronomers that they picked a place somewhere in the US that they thought was safe and they saw the encroaching light pollution as more and more development sprung up.

Bill McGeeney: 44:14

And it's not even just, as you say, like nowadays with LEDs. A lot of the fixtures that you'll have, say, industrial parking lot, right with all trucks and everything. They just want to light it up so that way you know they have the coverage on the ground. No-transcript.

Nico Carver: 44:51

Even in my. My parents have a place in Northwestern Wisconsin so I've been going up there as a cabin, you know, on a lake, and I've been going up there all my life. So I still remember seeing the Perseid meteor shower there as a kid and then I just saw it just this past year. And it's amazing how much just people want to light up their, their docks with all of these little solar powered LED lights, just how much if everyone on the lake is doing that, it knocks you up a portal. It really just is quite distracting.

Bill McGeeney: 45:18

If you come here to Philly and you put those LED lights out there, chances are that, depending on what neighborhood you're living in, people might just take them anyway. So that happens during daytime videos. It's good to watch. It's good comedy if you ever are looking for things to watch in your neighborhood to watch. It's good comedy if you ever are looking for things to watch in your neighborhood.

Bill McGeeney: 45:40

Well, we're talking on this idea of and I know we've hit it pretty hard here, but I just wanted to just bring up this little quick study where it's saying that if you live under light pollution, you'll be less likely to cultivate an interest and appreciation of understanding astronomy or universe, which, anecdotally, which we spoke about before, it doesn't seem to be the case, because we seem to have what sounds like the curiosity is actually growing. But this is a very simplistic study and it's just really looking at a correlation and I just thought this was interesting. Maine ranked very positively for low light pollution but inspired next to no one to care about the universe. Meanwhile, in the deep South, which generally ranked as poor as you could be for light pollution, they also mostly inspired next to no one unless you live in Tennessee or Florida. I thought that was pretty funny to just see, and I guess it depends on which parts of those states you're really looking for.

Bill McGeeney: 46:30

But, nico, we spoke about this before and you spoke about the DSLR, the camera eye and being able to pull out so much more because we have, like a quick flicker of a human eye, these new devices that we have out there, like a Seastar, which I use and I really enjoy, and I mean, I have a regular scope but I also use a Seastar. Do you think this is making its way down to kids who just want to check out the night sky and they hate they live in a portal seven, portal six and they can't see much?

Nico Carver: 46:58

yeah, I definitely think so. I think that as the technology gets better like I was saying about the cell phones with the aurora if there's something that the technology opens up and you can see for the first time, that's going to maybe spark a love of astronomy and then hopefully they also realize like the light pollution is a problem after they maybe get hooked on astronomy. Because even with a device like the Seastar that you mentioned, which is a little robotic telescope, if you use that in a city and take some photographs they'll look okay. But then if you bring that to a dark sky you'll be amazed at how much better the photographs are even with something like that, Because the dark skies make astrophotography sort of like on easy mode. It makes everything look so much better if you're under a dark sky.

Bill McGeeney: 47:44

Oh, definitely. We're all working in such light polluted areas that it's a feat of strength to get these things to look kind of normalized. Three Star for you at Home is like a $550 item the size of an American football. It's tiny and it's really affordable in terms of photography standards. So really, if you're looking for something for this holiday season, whenever that's coming up. They also looked at the relationship between night sky and gratitude or spiritual peace, which they saw really no relationship for.

Bill McGeeney: 48:16

Before we leave this set of articles, I do want to circle back to Tucker real fast, and in Australia, the capital city, kambara, has recently implemented a light pollution reduction scheme. Kambara has just switched over to an adjustable brightness LED lighting throughout the whole city, which will reduce the lighting footprint by 30%, and this comes off some of the work that Tucker and some others have observed in the forthcoming paper. The city has been dimming the streetlights about by 50% of their total brightness throughout the night percent of their total brightness throughout the night. Tucker's future paper also estimates that there's a positive correlation of five percent reduction in light pollution for every 10 percent in streetlight brightness.

Bill McGeeney: 49:01

And this is all good and great, brad Tucker, don't take anything away, but there is Caleb Brown, a Sky News host, who really did his best Tucker Carlson impersonation and torched the town for turning off some streetlights. Because in the UK, as we've heard over the past few months, rising costs of energy has really clamped down on some of those public utilities. We see such fear sometimes and it's conveyed, especially like Caleb Bond's approach was to demonize individuals. Now obviously he's trying to do this for ratings, but you know there are people who kind of stole this idea. What's the best course when you're conveying a dark skies framework or some trying to convey comfort with what you're talking about to people who might be aggressively distorting the facts?

Nancy Clanton: 49:47

We have done four different research papers on four different cities, starting with Anchorage, alaska, then down to San Jose and then San Diego, and finalized in Seattle. What we found and for those of you who are really, you know, scientists, unfortunately lighting level is on a linear scale, yet our senses are on a logarithmic scale. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you look at sound, a decibel, one to two decibels, is a log scale. I would love it if lighting levels went to a logarithmic scale, because you have the lighting level, no one can ever see the difference.

Nancy Clanton: 50:39

And what we did in our study was that we actually found that by decreasing the lighting level and again it was a controlled study, taking people out, the public, the law enforcement, everyone out in a controlled study that they could actually see better and see targets further, the lower the lighting level it went. Why? Because lighting and our visibility is all based on contrast, it's not based on lighting level at all and it's less glare. So the lower the lighting, the less glare and the better adapted you are to it. So it's to say that there's a reduction and it's a problem and crime and security. Our research has shown just the opposite of that. So that's how I would answer. They can go and look at those four research papers.

Tyler Nordgren: 51:36

Nancy is just so absolutely correct and I hope that that news gets out to the public. But I'm afraid it won't, Because one of the things that we do talk about especially in places like national parks where you've got a lot of visitors they're from cities, they're uncomfortable the inclination is to light things up so nobody trips and hurts themselves and sues anybody, and that fear of bad actors out there wanting to do harm to folks. You can light something up like daytime. You're just going to create harsh, dark shadows, You're going to create glare that keeps your eyes from becoming adjusted to the darkness, Whereas, yeah, you turn those light levels down, you get rid of that glare, you get rid of the harsh contrast between bright and dark and you can see so much more with so much less light.

Nancy Clanton: 52:29

That's absolutely true, tyler. In fact, at Grand grand canyon we showed that. We did set up experiments there and we noticed that if we could light stairs and these are stone steps with very little contrast between the riser, you know, and the tread if we could emphasize the shadow of the tread and to do lighting that kind of worked with the stairs instead, just blasted the stairs, people could see so well and we brought the public through, people that had no idea where they were and, like I said, we were able to get down to two moonlights and they could see perfectly because of using contrast as the metric.

Bill McGeeney: 53:15

Nancy, I want to ask you on the shadow question. I think it's the MLK Memorial down in DC. First thing I noticed about that. I don't know if have you had a chance to ever see that night.

Nancy Clanton: 53:25

I have not, but I know the designer who designed it.

Bill McGeeney: 53:29

Yeah, the first thing I noticed about that and the first time I saw it I don't know if it's changed at all. This is probably about 10 years ago All the letters were lit up were essentially in the shadow right, like the whole point was to give it like a drop shadow. Is that what we're talking about? Is that what we're talking about here?

Nancy Clanton: 53:45

Yes, it is If you look at you know, let's say you have a headlamp on top of your forehead and you're going. It's a small little light source, you're not lighting everything, but you can see well because it's in the direction you're going. You're not getting that glare and you can see you're creating shadows of when the terrain changes. You are creating a shadow, so you can see it.

Bill McGeeney: 54:17

Shadows are extremely important for us to see different things this leads really well into, unfortunately, ann Arbor right when Ann Arbor is going to go with using a brighter wattage light. I think they're looking at doing 58 watt versus 29 watt LED lights. The color's good 2700, but the 58 watt was picked because Ann Arbor had a and I think I have a quote somewhere I don't know if I still have it but essentially they didn't think it adequately illuminated areas for people to pass through and it wasn't a quote that would say, like you know, it's not adequately lit to levels of standards, but it came across more that it was too dim. There's two things I don't understand about that conversation they're having there. First off, why are we referring to LED lights and watts? Because I don't understand what that translates to.

Nancy Clanton: 55:11

And I don't understand it either, bill. It's kind of like saying a cookie is delicious on how much sugar you have in it versus everything else that is part of it, and you know. It is like where the light's distributed. Where is it targeted? Low light levels are great. If you have all that, you control it. It's warmer color, it's the design of the lighting and not necessarily the watts. So I would please don't use watts as your determinant. It is the overall quality of the light, yeah, and it makes no sense.

Bill McGeeney: 55:51

And you look at that when they they have a picture right of the light, yeah, and it makes no sense. And you look at that when they have a picture right of the 58 watt which looks pretty bright because, okay, so you get the road and sidewalk, we're good there, right, but then you have two trees that are lit pretty well up and in front of a house. So these are the new fixtures that they're putting in there, and it seemed to be a compromise between having a temperature and then bright lux level that is hitting the ground there. I see this a lot on my where I live, and if you go out to the suburbs you see good temperatures, but it's typically very bright. I mean, here in Philly you can give up on anything because it's daylight all the time, but you know, you know what I'm saying.

Nancy Clanton: 56:34

It's it needs. It needs someone who knows lighting design to actually look at it. Because even though people don't like leds and they say they're too bright, there's some amazing pictures that have leds, like in the housing, and they kind of go across almost like a light wave across the lens. So you don't see those little points of light. And these luminaires are being designed by many, many manufacturers that you can actually vary the distribution of the light where you are. In fact, my dream is that our cell phones.

Nancy Clanton: 57:17

You could go out there and go oh gee, it's in somebody's house. Let's take that distribution and move it somewhere else and let's reduce the glare of it, because these luminaires are designed that way. It appears as if they may not have selected it for the location and for the application. And then every single Luminaire LED Luminaire now comes with dimmable drivers, almost automatic. So they're all set up to start dimming and to start changing distribution. To start dimming and to start changing distribution. Yeah, we're doing a living lab up in Curitiba, alaska, and it's amazing to go up there and we are changing the distribution of the light. We're changing the color of the light, we have four different control modules and it's based on, of course, the ecological effect of light, bird migration, salmon, all of that. So it's really exciting and I would say just hold on, and within a few months you're going to see amazing different options available for LED street lighting.

Bill McGeeney: 58:36

I guess it's probably going to be pricey, though, right? I mean, I don't know about your community, but I don't think mine wants to spend more money on getting different street lights.

Nancy Clanton: 58:46

Think about the impact that lighting has on the ecology, and we can delve into that in almost a whole different section well, we will, we'll get to that agriculture, all of that but, anyway it's.

Nancy Clanton: 59:01

It's worth it because of the impact on people, plants, pollinators and as my great friend na Naomi Miller of Pacific Northwest Labs said. She said you know, we can close our blinds at night, but the critters can't, and so you just kind of go. We really have to take into account everybody, no matter who you are, in the design of the street lighting. And, yes, you can afford it. Communities can do it.

Bill McGeeney: 59:36

I hope we're very optimistic on this show. I think I know I personally have trouble trying to convey that to my community. We just put in new leftover fixtures. I believe. I know that they're very bright on an ecological area, because that's what you do, because you have the pole there and you want to replace everything, because everything has to be led now. There's only so much wiggle room we have right, unless we have from the get-go a good, amazing person like you, nancy, sitting here being able to convey these, these ideas and topics to the stakeholders. I don't think most people have that ability or that reach.

Nancy Clanton: 1:00:16

Yeah, and sorry for interrupting, but there is a. You can always go to Dark Sky International and they have an incredible resource on you know, called the five principles of outdoor lighting. Principles of outdoor lighting and what's important and it was done those five principles in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society. So all of us geeky engineers got together with the astronomers and put these five principles together and we all signed off on them. So I think that that would be an incredible resource for people to go and look.

Tyler Nordgren: 1:00:56

Sadly, I think this has just been a few years too late for a lot of communities like Ithaca, new York, which is where I live. That summer I was astronomer in residence out at Grand Canyon is when they made the conversion to LEDs. So I returned home to find out just how horrible what they had done was, and when I contacted the city engineer, I got the full thing of oh, we can consider best practices. We found the best cities that had done the best job, and we've just modeled that. We've spent the money. We, this is what we've got, and there's there's no argument that you're going to give them for how to change because they just spent the money.

Tyler Nordgren: 1:01:35

We, this is what we've got, and there's there's no argument that you're going to give them for how to change, because they just spent the money. And they spent the money on something they were told was going to last forever and met best practices. As of whenever it was, they consulted it. And so there there's. I went around and around. The best I could do was get them to change the wattage of the streetlight right outside of my house which, as you said, it went from 60 watts to 40 and was utterly negligible in terms of what I noticed, it still shines into my second floor bedroom and trying to convince them, I mean you're going to have to wait until that guy retires before you can tell them they made a mistake.

Bill McGeeney: 1:02:13

So well. San Jose did a streetlight and there's a great quote in here and I never drove through San Jose at night, so I don't know if this is true or not, but I would love to know if any of you guys have San Jose selected 3,000 Kelvin color temperature right? That's in line with IES standards, namely because residents and police complained about the low-pressure sodium lights being too easily confused with traffic signals and bathing the general area in too much low contrasting light. Don't read that one too often.

Nancy Clanton: 1:02:45

By the way, that was our study. We're the ones who completely changed San Jose's street lighting and, yes, I've got pictures of the low pressure sodium right up against the, the yellow light, and people went. Oh, we see that and we think that we can go through the intersection.

Tyler Nordgren: 1:03:11

It's very interesting.

Bill McGeeney: 1:03:12

Well, let's finish out this half of the episode with this very interesting story. Here's a good, good streetlight story. It's not all gloom and doom if you live on a moon. Humanity is preparing. Obviously we're making our trying to get to our first extraterrestrial leap and one company is trying to create what they call the Swiss Army Knife of ArcLights. And while we may need shelter, water, power and really all the trappings of survivability in this ruthlessly hostile environment on the moon, darpa has awarded Honeybee Robotics with funding to provide quote taller than the Statue of Liberty-sized streetlights on the moon under the project called Lunar Unity Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Bearing for Energy Redistribution. A very lengthy mouthful that feels very forced, but it comes up with a very fun short acronym of Lunar Sabre. So the light tower isn't there just to provide light to craters or light for the 14 Earth Day long lunar night. The height of the tower allows it to continue to collect some energy and also serves as a recharging station, wi-fi network, and it's pretty much going to be a hub for us to have on the moon. So it's a very cool story.

Bill McGeeney: 1:04:28

Well, we can close this one out and let's stop here for today. Pick up second half of the show in two weeks. I want to thank my guest, dr tyler norgan, the youtube channel, nebula photos, nico carver, and we also have the lighting designer, ceo of visibility innovations, ms nancy clanton. As a reminder to you at home, you can join the conversation over linkedin, instagram, facebook or even by texting the show right in the show notes. We record light pollution News in one fell swoop each month. This month's recording date was September 22nd. Supporters of the show can join us as a live audience member, where we typically have a little chat once the recording is done. Thank you, guys for joining me today and, as a reminder, my name is Bill McGeaney, reminding you to only shine a light where it's needed. Have a great October, folks. See you in two weeks.