{"id":19360,"date":"2016-06-10T22:18:30","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T14:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/most-of-us-cant-see-the-milky-way-this-dark-sky-atlas-shows-you-where-you-can\/"},"modified":"2016-06-10T22:18:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T14:18:30","slug":"most-of-us-cant-see-the-milky-way-this-dark-sky-atlas-shows-you-where-you-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/most-of-us-cant-see-the-milky-way-this-dark-sky-atlas-shows-you-where-you-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Most of us can\u2019t see the Milky Way \u2013 this dark sky atlas shows you where you can"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_254530\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-254530\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-254530\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-sky-630x460.jpg\" alt=\"Night sky\" width=\"630\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-sky-630x460.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-sky-768x561.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-sky-1240x906.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-sky.jpg 1939w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-254530\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Google Earth visualization shows the effect of light pollution on night-sky viewing in North America. Darker colors indicate lower light pollution, while warmer colors indicate higher levels. (Credit: Falchi et al., Science Advances; Jakob Grothe \/ NPS; Matthew Price \/ CU-Boulder)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Eighty percent of Americans can\u2019t see the Milky Way from where they live, according to a new analysis of light pollution\u2019s effect on the night sky. The global dark sky atlas, produced by an international team of researchers, suggests there\u2019s only one spot in Washington state that\u2019s untouched by the effect of artificial light.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope that this atlas will finally open the eyes of people to light pollution,\u201d Fabio Falchi of Italy\u2019s Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute said in a news release. Falchi is the lead author of the analysis, published today by Science Advances.<\/p>\n<p>The atlas is based on readings from the Suomi NPP satellite, which was launched in 2011 and is managed by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Suomi\u2019s main purpose is to provide weather data, but it\u2019s equipped with imagers that can pick up low-light readings at night.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Night sky atlas tracks light pollution\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1tHF_Lp1-yU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Falchi and his colleagues focused on levels of artificial lighting, and how much that illumination from streetlights, house lights and other sources is likely to obscure astronomical observations from locations around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>They determined that one-third of humanity lives in places where the light pollution is so bad that the Milky Way, a river of stars that typically dominates unsullied skies, would be invisible. In the United States, the fade-out is worse than the global average.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got whole generations of people in the United States who have never seen the Milky Way,\u201d said Chris Elvidge, a scientist at NOAA\u2019s National Centers for Environmental Information in Boulder, Colo. \u201cIt\u2019s a big part of our connection to the cosmos \u2013&nbsp;and it\u2019s been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As expected, Washington\u2019s hot spots&nbsp;center around the state\u2019s urban areas&nbsp;\u2013 Seattle, Spokane, Wenatchee, Yakima, the Tri-Cities and the Portland-Vancouver area.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_254534\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-254534\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-254534\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-wash-630x369.jpg\" alt=\"A closeup from the dark sky atlas shows hot spots for light pollution in Washington state. One black spot indicates where the night sky is &quot;pristine,&quot; with less than 1 percent artificial light added to natural levels. \" width=\"630\" height=\"369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-wash-630x369.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-wash-768x449.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/160610-wash.jpg 1099w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-254534\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A closeup from the dark sky atlas shows hot spots for light pollution in Washington state. One black spot indicates where the night sky is \u201cpristine,\u201d with less than 1 percent artificial light added to natural levels. The light pink and white areas in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., indicate areas where artificial illumination is more than 20 times as high as natural levels. (Credit: Falchi et al. via AAAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The darkest spots tend to be around national forests and national parks. The one spot in the state where the atlas shows totally dark skies is in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest\u2019s Paysayten Wilderness, in north central Washington. That spot takes in a few well-known skywatching sites, including Billy Goat Mountain and Hart\u2019s Pass. (For more, check out this website, as well as the Washington Trails Association\u2019s Dark Places Digest, the Clear Sky Chart and DarkSkies Northwest.)<\/p>\n<p>The global survey found that light pollution is most extensive in countries such as Singapore, Italy and South Korea, while Canada and Australia retain the highest proportion of dark sky.<\/p>\n<p>Light pollution isn\u2019t just an aesthetic concerns. Studies have found that high levels of artificial light can confuse wildlife such as insects, birds and sea turtles, sometimes with fatal consequences. Research also has linked excessive artificial light to human maladies such as obesity, diabetes, depression and sleep disorders.<\/p>\n<p>Some areas have taken measures to reduce light pollution \u2013 for example, by installing sky-friendly streetlights. A bill passed during this year\u2019s legislative session directs the Washington State Department of Transportation to minimize light pollution&nbsp;on state highways.<\/p>\n<p><em>In addition to Falchi and Elvidge, authors of \u201cThe New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness\u201d include Pierantonio Cinzano, Dan Duriscoe, Christopher Kyba, Kimberly Baugh, Boris Portnov, Nataliya Rybnikova and Riccardo Furgoni. The University of Colorado\u2019s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences is making an interactive map with data download instructions available online.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Google Earth visualization shows the effect of light pollution on night-sky viewing in North America. Darker colors indicate lower light pollution, while warmer colors indicate higher levels. (Credit: Falchi et al., Science Advances; Jakob Grothe \/ NPS; Matthew Price \/ CU-Boulder) Eighty percent of Americans can\u2019t see the Milky Way from where they live, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1661,5546,5547,21],"class_list":["post-19360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronomy","tag-light-pollution","tag-lighting","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}