I AM a firm believer that you can stargaze anywhere. In fact, a few years ago, I wrote a book about stargazing from cities based on that very premise. My argument is that stargazing can sometimes be easier to do from urban areas, especially for people who are new to the pastime and want to learn their way around the night sky. In a dark sky filled with stars, you can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of them and can lose the patterns of the constellations.
Having said that, I am very concerned about light pollution, particularly after reading a suggesting that, from 2011 to 2022, light pollution has got worse 鈥� and quickly. It reported the results of a citizen science project that collected information from people all over the world, totalling more than 51,000 observations of the night sky, finding that it is brightening by close to 10 per cent each year.
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Light pollution isn鈥檛 just a problem for stargazers. It is a driver of biodiversity loss, particularly affecting birds. It harms human health too, and . It is also a huge carbon emitter 鈥� the energy used sending light into the sky is simply a waste of electricity.
The International Dark Sky Association has a that people can follow to limit their contribution to light pollution. This includes making sure that any outdoor light you install is necessary, only points exactly where you need it and is only used when required. You should also limit the amount of blue light in your outdoor lighting. Just as you may have heard about blue light emitted by electronics, blue light outside at night is bad for our circadian rhythms. It is also worse than warmer-coloured light for throwing off your eyesight as you look for dim objects in the sky.
The biggest culprits for light pollution in cities are things like streetlights and bright lights from big commercial premises, such as supermarkets. You can write to your local government if you are concerned about unnecessary light pollution in your area.
It isn鈥檛 all doom and gloom, though. Countryside charity CPRE has run a UK each February since 2019 to build up a picture of how light pollution is changing. By its estimates, in the UK at least, light pollution got better during the pandemic and, by 2022, still hadn鈥檛 got worse. The results of this year鈥檚 count are due soon.
If you live in a light-polluted city and want to find somewhere dark to view the things you won鈥檛 see from your house, like the band of the Milky Way or the Andromeda galaxy, you can use a global from a site like to find the best location near you. Mine is the Northumberland National Park, which is the UK鈥檚 biggest designated dark sky area.
What you need
Access to an interactive dark sky map from a site like
For other projects visit newscientist.com/maker.
