time light pollution is sadly familiar to all of us. While our grandparents and great-grandparents may talk fondly of seeing the Milky Way in their youth, with thousands of stars scattered across the dark summer sky, we are mostly content with seeing a few dozen stars through the never-ending dusk of urban and suburban skies.
Supplemental electric lighting for greenhouses may be essential for extending the growing season in northern climates, but it comes with a not-so-hidden cost: environmental light pollution. The consequences of this pollution may range from irate neighbours in rural...
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/01/21 At first glance, this appears to be an innocuous question: How much light pollution is attributable to automotive headlights? It is also a good question in that if...
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/07/20 "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." When Rudyard Kipling wrote this line in his poem The Ballad of East and West (Kipling 1892),...
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/03/03 UPDATE 2016/03/03 - Revised Figure 6. The problem is astronomical -- the blue light emitted by LED roadway luminaires has been shown to contribute to light...
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/07/22 UPDATE: Sports field lighting analysis added 15/10/12. [An edited version of this article was published as "STREET LIGHTS: Light pollution depends on the light source CCT"...
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/02/17 Blue-rich light from LED streetlights, we are told, is the nemesis of professional and amateur astronomers. Blue light is preferentially scattered by the atmosphere,...