Light Pollution Hides Milky Way From 80 Percent Of North Americans, Atlas Shows

LED street lights offer a lot of versatility and the ability to control where the light shines...and they now cost out better than other lights. The city skylines should be getting a bit dimmer as fixtures are replaced.

I'd welcome the change. The orange sodium vapor lights do cast a major glow, it's even sort of eerie during fog or when there's low cloud cover, the whole sky glows like there's a major fire somewhere close. Some of the outer suburbs nearby have "night skies" ordinances requiring that street lights, security lighting, etc. be shielded to cast light downward. While I'm a little suspicious of the expense and the intrusion, I do agree with the sentiment. We've gone overboard with lighting at night in general. Put the light where it's needed and not where it's not.

Shields on the lights add very minimal cost. Where the cost can go up is when ordinances force you to use many short poles, instead of a few tall poles.

The LED street lights are shielded by default - just the way they are set up, with the diodes on the bottom. The diodes can be ordered with a ‘tilt’ to each one, depending on how you want to cast the light - very useful. In general, an LED lit parking lot will have fewer ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots, and more uniform light...and a more abrupt drop off of light at the property boundary. It really is a quiet revolution in outdoor lighting.

And then there’s the cost savings. When street lights burn 8-10 hours a day, the LED pays for itself fairly quickly (not saving the planet, just saving money).

And the lower voltage allows you to add onto existing systems, without adding new circuits, wires, etc. For example, a parking lot with 20 standard lamps can be doubled in size...and if you replace the existing lamps with LED, you have plenty of juice to add 20 more, without upgrading anything.

This all makes me ponder how fluorescents were foisted on we the sheeple. The government picked a ‘winner’ (likely that was greased by people who would benefit), and the market wasted around 15 years screwing around with a lousy technology. Our little LED revolution (they now make replacements for office fluorescents) would have come a decade earlier, if government would have stayed out of it - for economic reasons and quality of light reasons, instead of saving the planet.

Sailing out over 100 miles into the Gulf of Mexico, my crewmates (mostly under 30) were astounded by what they saw. It's something that most of them will never forget.

Certain kinds of LED lights, while being more energy efficient, actually will dramatically increase light pollution

LOL! Schadenfreude?

Leave it some envirowacko to move to the Central African Republic just to be able to see more stars.

As usual, they stretch the truth to make a point. I live in the middle of Denver and cannot see the Milky Way disk, but I can see constellations like Orion and the Big Dipper as well as the brighter planets. Just go camping a couple of hours West and you can see everything in all its glory in a cathedral forest.

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