Reducing Outdoor Light Pollution

Our club, The North Shore Erie Amateur Astronomers, is becoming increasingly concerned about night-time light pollution and its many detrimental effects on our environment and enjoyment of dark skies filled with stars. This careless waste of energy only adds to atmospheric pollution and to global warming. Far worse it denies all of us, especially our children, that soul lifting, awe inspiring vision of our universe that a night under a star studded dark sky offers! We welcome your support in this regard. Listed are various links that contain information on light pollution. For a copy of our brochure on why we need to reduce light pollution and how you can help ( you will need the Adobe Acrobat reader to see this file) please click brochure. 

A satellite picture showing light pollution around the world can be seen here.

Following are a list of links showing what other organizations and the city of Calgary have achieved. 

http://www.elightspot.com/your-online-guide-to-light-pollution.aspx 

http://www.affordablelamps.com/light-pollution-and-its-ecological-effects.html 

Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 

Consequences of Light Pollution

Effects of light pollution on human health and some basic energy efficient lighting solutions

New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance

International Dark Sky Association

Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) ( This link shows the danger to birds from light pollution)

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/darksky

http://calgary.rasc.ca/lp/index.html  ( What the city of Calgary has accomplished curbing light pollution)

http://www.kwic.com/~amj/light-pollution.html (newspaper article on growing light pollution)

http://www.darkskysociety.org/links.cfm

http://skynews.ca/pages/light_pollution.html

The two links below are to companies that manufacture LED (light emitting diode) lighting. This lighting is even more efficient than flourescent.

http://www.proterraled.ca/home_can.html  

http://www.zortechindustries.com/  

Following are some articles in text format on light pollution..

RASC (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada) Bulletin of June 1995, October 1995, December 1995.

The July/August 2001 issue of SkyNews Magazine on page 12 has an article entitled "Reducing Light Pollution-Is It Possible?". It discusses what the city of Calgary has done and the benefits.

The May/June 2004 issue of SkyNews has an article on page 25 where Walmart in Huntsville, ON converted their lights to the full cut-off type in their parking lots.

To visit our club's astronomy web site please click this link . Questions or comments may be sent to amj@kwic.com