Light Pollution Video - John Mason

19 Jun 2007

What is 'Light Pollution'?
website: www.lightpollution.org.uk

Light pollution is simply light that is having a bad effect on the environment. major effects are:

1. Wasted light means wasted energy that means unnecessary carbon emissions

2. Nocturnal insects are affected. Animals which depend on these insects for food are then affected.

3. A comprehensive guide can be found in " Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting" by Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore. ISBN 1-55963-128-7 ISLAND PRESS 2006 £20.78. A brief review of this book can be seen Here

4. The beauty of the night sky is lost - when is the last time you REALLY saw the stars in all their glory?

WE ARE ALL HEARING OF OUR CARBON FOOTPRINTS! WHAT ABOUT OUR SKYPRINTS?
Light Pollution is stamping its "footprint" across our night sky and blotting out our views of the stars and the Milky Way. Should we be concerned with our Skyprints which waste energy and pollute the night sky with unwanted light and wasted energy? Why do we tolerate this? Ask your city fathers.

5. The image here is taken from the title slide of Dr. John Mason's lecture at the CfDS Dark Sky Symposium last year (2006) in Portsmouth, England. This 50MB PDF will take about 3-4 minutes to download on broadband connections. I am currently editing (June 2007) the video of his lecture. It is now completed and is a 41MB WMV file which is now downloadable from this page.

Click Here to access this Video

Note: There are now more wmv videos from the presentations made at last year's symposium.
They are accessible from http://www.lightpollution.org.uk or the BAA CfDS site at www.britastro.org/dark-skies/cfds2006

It lasts 1/2 hour but is good enough quality AND CONTENT to justify watching. (Download times for broadband are 3-4 minutes. Dial-up will be too long.) It is informative and even humourous! You will enjoy it and find that it even educates. (Please know that your WMV codecs will need to be correct for this version of WMV - I will advise correction procedures when I know what problems will occur). ENJOY.

If you are a member of an astronomical society then download John's video and show it at your meetings. Please pass this idea on to others in other astro socs.

Please spread the word.

[Editor's Note: Thanks to Graham Cliff making us aware of this article]

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