Pollution is the obstacle against seeing the milky way, and specifically, light pollution. That magnificent view is not seen by one third of humanity due to the luminescent glow of artificial light, scientists who created a new world atlas of light pollution say.
After creating the first world atlas of artificial night sky brightness over a decade ago, Fabio Falchi and colleagues at the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy created an updated version of it this year.
In the new study, they updated their original work by creating another, more precise atlas that incorporates new tools and uses new data from a high-resolution satellite.
National and global levels of light pollution
The atlas displays population and land-based light pollution statistics for all countries, showing the magnitude of the problem for each and facilitating easy comparison of national and global levels of light pollution.
Unfortunately, light pollution has received relatively little attention, despite its global presence and potential environmental risks. Unlike other pollutants, such as noise levels in the oceans, artificial light levels are poorly quantified.
More than 80 per cent of the world’s population sees a polluted night sky, due to artificial light, researchers said. The add that “the atlas will be an important tool for studying artificial light as an environmental pollutant with potential health and ecological consequences.”
It also sets a precise point against which to compare future increases or decreases in global light pollution.
Light pollution is no longer merely an annoyance for astronomers. The artificial brightening of the night sky is profoundly altering a fundamental human experience — the opportunity for each person to view and ponder the sky above in evening hours.
Even small increases in night sky brightness degrade this experience, researchers said.
99% of US & Europe live under a polluted sky
99 per cent of the U.S. and Europe live under light polluted skies, the atlas shows. “Polluted”, according to the researchers is the level of brightness at which artificial light substantially obscures astronomical observations.
The atlas also unveils that in some places with high levels of light pollution, such as Singapore, people never experience conditions resembling true night because it is masked by artificial twilight; in such places, most of the population lives under skies so bright that their eyes cannot fully adapt to night vision.
The study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, also reveals that countries with populations least affected by light pollution are Chad, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar.
More than three quarters of inhabitants in these places live under pristine, ink-black night sky conditions.
Light pollution is in our hands; we are the ones to stop it!
