Astronomy Buff

Why Do We Need Streetlights that can Guide in the Space Shuttle?

by Tony on March 18th, 2007

Look at this gawd-awful streetlamp. It is spewing photons all over the place, including people’s eyes when they look at it. Jeebus this irritates me.

Recently I was walking on the downtown mall in Boulder on a nice, cool night. Lots of people, lots of street performers, quite a lovely time. It had been a while since I’ve been there and I was marveling at all the changes. It’s really a lot of fun to be on the Boulder mall.

Then I arrived at the corner of 13th and Pearl. I was passing the courthouse and I looked up as I often do, out of habit, to see the stars, to see what I could see. As my eyes turned upward, I felt like a cop was shining their Maglite in my face. I was blinded temporarily by the glare from these goddam street lamps!

I mean, wtf? Do we REALLY need this kind of lamp? These lamps were over 20 feet tall, why are we trying to light up the area right above them? Do we ever look there? No. We are on the ground, that’s where the photons need to be dammit. We need the photons shining on the ground, below the lamp, AND NOWHERE ELSE.

The glare from these lamps is so bright that they actually inhibit helping you see where you’re going because you have to squint or shield your eyes with your hands to get where you’re going.

These are the worst kind of lights as they are throwing half of the light up into the sky and not where we need it. They are wasting light and ruining the night sky. If I were to make a Globe at Night measurement for the conditions on the downtown Boulder mall, I would have used the Magnitude 2 chart. That’s worse than my backyard.

I guess these lights are decorative, but there are plenty of ways to pretty up a street lamppost without having just stick a bright bulb on a stick and let it shine everywhere.

The Space Shuttle doesn’t need any more help finding earth, it can do that on it’s own quite nicely.

Technorati Tags: GLOBE at Night, light pollution

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