We’re forgetting what darkness feels like

We’re forgetting what darkness feels like theguardian.com

If more cities start regulating outdoor lighting, we humans could make the environment better for all living creatures

193 points•pseudolus•1 day ago•110 comments•

#forgetting #darkness #like #feels #darkness feels #feels like #darkness feels like #cities

110 comments

I grew up in a rural place where we could see the texture of the milky way just stepping outside at night—it’s been fun taking friends who grew up in cities on wilderness backpacking trips and sitting out to watch the stars. There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.

I did also have a cool experience, deep in the backcountry at a high elevation camp some years ago: we went to sleep in a gale, the tent flapping all around, with a cloudy sky. I thought we’d get a big storm, but I woke up hot at 3am, the air totally still. I slid out of the tent and the sky was completely crystal clear. An incredible spread of stars. I watched for a while and noticed a reddish glow on the horizon. We were so far out and it wrapped around in all directions, so I knew it couldn’t possibly have been a town, but I was puzzled. I learned about airglow when we got out of the woods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow

magicalhippo1 day ago

> There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.

I've only really experienced this once in my life. I was young teen, my family was visiting some family friends at a remote cabin. I woke up during the middle of the night and went out. It was a crystal clear winter night, and I was completely blown away at what I saw.

Once I had gotten over the shock, I thought "no wonder they called it the milky way". It was so bright, it felt like a new moon just smeared all across the sky.

Sadly not had the chance to experience that again. The then-remote cabin got swarmed by hundreds of others and so it's no longer pitch dark at night there.

I have it as a goal to get out in a really dark zone and see it again.

Windchaserabout 20 hours ago

It's crazy that you can "see" (identify) the Milky Way at a level 5/6 on the Bortle Scale, even in the light pollution of the suburbs. But you don't realize just how brilliant it really is until you're really out to a dark sky spot.

For reference, the Bortle Scale[*] goes from 1 to 9, with 1 being pristine darkness and 9 being Manhattan.

Also worth noting that the Milky Way is brighter in early summer, late May to mid-July, as that's when the Earth's night sky is facing the most towards the Galactic Core. Go find yourself some deep dark sky on a new moon, and sit back and enjoy the enormity of the cosmos.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale#/media/File:How_l...

pmoriarty1 day ago

I love watching the milky way on a clear, dark night. There are so many stars. Countless stars. It makes me feel really small and all my troubles (and the world's troubles) so insignificant. I love that feeling.

laweijfmvoabout 23 hours ago

idk if it’s just my eyes getting old, or my LASIK, or the sky just not being dark anywhere anymore, but these trips don’t look the same to me as they used to. today it all just seems kinda static-y and fuzzy, but i remember my first night in the grand canyon being an absolutely amazing experience.

noosphrabout 23 hours ago

Outside of a few places like the Himalayas or Australia isn't not possible to see the darkness everyone lived in until street lighting.

This is the most accurate map and it still under reports light pollution under 21.5sqm https://www.darkskysites.com/

Worse satellite constilations may make it impossible to have a dark sky anywhere: https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1

Led lights have caused such a massive increase in light pollution, let alone the effects on humans due to the blue spike, that they should be banned outright.

BoxOfRainabout 16 hours ago

Yeah I really don't like the proliferation of blue-pumped LEDs, they're environmentally friendly from the narrow perspective of energy use but they make the lived environment much worse in other ways, particularly the horrid clinical high-K ones people who want to make a 'modern' ambiance love so much.

In my view we should simply have improved on what already existed, instead of blue-pumped LEDs we should have used monochromatic amber ones like the SOX streetlights which were once ubiquitous in the UK. Night actually looked like night back then, rather than a cheap and nasty approximation of daytime.

wolvoleoabout 12 hours ago

LEO satellites only cause problems around dusk and dawn, when they're exposed to light but the surface is not.

Because they're so close to the earth's surface it doesn't happen all night because they'll be in darkness too.

marcus_holmesabout 22 hours ago

I've driven across Australia a couple of times. Night on the Nullarbor is an amazing experience. So. Many. Stars.

I was lucky enough to witness a thunderstorm over the desert, too. Too far for any noise to reach me, I just saw the clouds lighting up on the horizon. Incredibly beautiful, and not a little spooky. I totally understand why there are so many UFO sightings there.

fsckboyabout 22 hours ago

there are tons of places in the US where it's dark enough you can see the milky way shining brilliantly, just not in the heavily populated areas. Washington, Oregon, Idaho Montana, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont. even more places in Canada, Alaska, Norway...

DanielHBabout 16 hours ago

I remember as a teenager going for a road trip, there was a stretch of the road that had no street lights about 100km away from the closest city. Looking at the side of the car I was surprised just how bright it gets when the moon is out and the sky is clear. You can totally walk around in the open without any extra lights.

1718627440about 6 hours ago

> You can totally walk around in the open without any extra lights.

The moon of course has the same brightness, as if you were in a city. This is the ability of your eyes, to see in the darkness, if there are no too bright other light sources.

AngryDataabout 19 hours ago

Modern people are addicted to light. So many people now rarely experienced true darkness for more than a few seconds that they don't even think of going outside without a light because they think they won't be able to see even with a clear sky. Spend 20+ minutes without looking at a light source and even the stars will cast a visible shadow.

My family has a cabin in a true dark area and when I bring people there I often have to physically take their phones and lights away to get them to see a full night sky. They literally cannot resist looking at a bright ass light more than 60 seconds, and often with their screens on full brightness too. It makes me feel crazy sometimes, telling them they can see just fine without lights if they wait a minute or two is like you telling people they should try walking sometime and they act like you asked them to join the ministry of funny walks.

globular-toastabout 15 hours ago

Most people living in urban centres haven't ever experienced night vision. They can't, because there are too many lights around. The reason people can't go outside without a light is because after a few seconds they'll be blinded by someone else's light (car headlights are the worst), so everyone is forced to carry a light.

A couple of years ago there were reports of aurora borealis sightings in parts of England. That night looked like it was going to be clear so I decided to take a wander into a large meadow not far from town. Unfortunately lots of other people had the same idea. Cue a bunch of people standing around in a meadow looking at their phone screens and briefly glancing at the sky complaining that they can't see anything. Regular people just have no concept of darkness or night vision. I gave up after being blinding for the tenth time by someone's phone light.

1718627440about 6 hours ago

> Most people living in urban centres haven't ever experienced night vision. They can't, because there are too many lights around.

But surely a lot of apartments have some room or floor without windows? If you don't turn your internal lights on at night, sure that's not true darkness, but should be enough to experience night vision, no?

thaeli1 day ago

For most of my life, I never quite “got it” about the night sky. It was pretty, but not THAT different away from cities.

I only recently learned that visual snow syndrome is a thing, and that most people don’t have it. For me, there is a faint background of multicolor static (analog TV on a dead channel, for those who remember that) on everything, all the time. Light washes it out, so it’s only in the deep dark that I’m absolutely surrounded by it. (It’s basically visual tinnitus, which in turn lead me to discover that I’ve also had auditory tinnitus my whole life, it’s just a soft static not a “ringing” so I never realized it was the same phenomenon.)

jamiltonabout 22 hours ago

Huh, I just assumed everyone saw visual snow/noise in the dark, guess not. I was thinking of it like underexposed film grain.

I don't think I notice it that much with the night sky unless the stars are faint though.

cubefoxabout 19 hours ago

I still think everyone sees a noisy image in the dark if they pay attention. Simply because the retina is underexposed. "Visual snow" usually refers to a more extreme condition where you see it even in good lighting.

svachalek1 day ago

So you're living in the opening of Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

LeoPantheraabout 24 hours ago

That sentence has changed meaning twice, depending on what generation you are, it's either "snow", solid blue, or a screensaver.

BoxOfRainabout 13 hours ago

It's one of those things which seem to exist on a spectrum too; I have it severely enough that some days I outright can't read and my vision distorts quite badly, and it's accompanied by a permanent migraine-like headache. On the other hand, many people I've spoken too experience little impairment at all.

It's a badly named syndrome in my view, since most people younger than me have no idea what TV snow is, and some of the symptoms aren't visual.

ebb_earl_coabout 21 hours ago

I have this as well, and it showed up suddenly about 9 years ago. Trying to observe the sky ever since is distressing because I remember how my visual field used to be.

r3trohack3rabout 22 hours ago

Darkness is one of the benefits of a high trust society.

Do we need bright white flood lights in places like Portland? Yes, they strongly correlate with reduced crime on the premise. This is the cost of a medium trust society.

Find a way to not have people regularly vandalize and B&E; many of the countermeasures can go away.

I live in a dark sky community and my property is unlit. I don’t worry about people walking onto my property at 2am.

duskdozerabout 7 hours ago

This is a common myth. Increased lighting does not reduce crime or improve safety[0,1], especially not poorly designed lighting - like the excessively bright and blue-tinted spotlights - which can even make things worse[2], by increasing glare, preventing our eyes from adjusting to the night, and increasing the number and contrast of relative dark spots.

Regardless, if one still lights up their own property due to anxiety, it's not a justification for causing light pollution. That light should remain on their property with angling and shielding.

[0]https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/chicago-...

[1]http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2015/07/08/jech-2015-20601...

[2]https://theconversation.com/more-lighting-alone-does-not-cre...

r3trohack3rabout 6 hours ago

Swedish meta analysis from 2021 [1]

> It is concluded that street lighting continues to be an effective intervention in preventing crime in public places. A narrative synthesis of effects of the eight new studies and a meta-analysis of 17 studies confirmed this conclusion. In pooling the effects of 17 studies that could be included in the meta-analysis, it was found that street lighting led to a significant 14% decrease in crime in experimental areas compared with comparable control areas.

[1] https://bra.se/download/18.47bb43da192711ebb374ea5/172950596...

a1pulley1 day ago

My city (low density suburb of Los Angeles) has outdoor lighting ordinances that spell out rules: all outdoor lighting must point downward, street lights are not allowed, holiday lights must be removed a week after New Years. There are also ordinances governing disputes--fees to get the inspector out at night, paperwork, etc.

If you want dark skies, take some friends to a city council meeting and make your case for similar ordinances. It's doable, even in a place like Los Angeles.

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