July 2024: We Need Better Resolution!

Host Bill McGeeney is joined by Ken Walczak of Dark Sky International, Lya Osborn of Light Justice, and the award winning landscape astrophotographer, Josh Dury.

See Full Show Notes, Lighting Tips and more at LightPollutionNews.com. Like this episode, share it with a friend!

Bill's Picks:

• Let there be Skyglow—light pollution from a large outdoor music festival (Lollapalooza Berlin 2016), Scientific Reports.
• Artificial Light at Night: State of the Science 2024, Drew Reagan, Dark Sky International.
• Saudi Arabia to build world's largest dark sky reserve for stargazing, The News.
• Astronomers versus activists: the battle over San Diego’s streetlights, Robert P Crease, Physics World.
• ‘Cosmic Baseball’ to illuminate the game like never before, Jason Foster, MLB.com.

Transcript

Bill McGeeney: 0:31

light pollution news july 2024. We need better resolution. Do we need a new satellite in the sky for monitoring light pollution? What does light at night really mean in terms of economic growth, research, and have you ever heard of the constellation rhea? We finished up our july show with light justices leah osborne, award-winning photographer, josh Dury and Dark Sky International's own, ken Walchek. A new Light Pollution News is next picking up where we left off. Thank you for joining us for second half of july's episode. To recap with me today, the lighting designer, writer and environmental justice advocate working with light justice is leah Osborne and the award-winning photographer You've seen his stuff out in CNN and BBC Mr Josh Dury. And then we also have the man who has many important roles, not least of which includes the work he does over at the Adler Planetarium, chicago, and, of course, he's on the board of Dark Sky International, mr Ken Walchek. Welcome back everyone. Let's continue where we left off.

Bill McGeeney: 1:50

Ken, I know you have something to say about this next story. Before we jump in, I came across a BBC Sky at Night article that discussed a recent photo from NASA's Earth Observatory, which is really cool. Peered down the I-95 corridor from Boston to DC. I thought this was great, a very visual representation of how little night we receive here on the East coast of the United States. With Boston situated on the bottom of the photo, you can see a blank area while traveling southward to New York city which is made up of several Connecticut state forests. And then we see new Haven, connecticut, bridgeport, connecticut, stanford, connecticut, kind of snake their way into Yonkers and whereby we'll see the rest of New York City becomes one indistinguishable yellow blur and from there you pass through North Jersey to Philadelphia, where you can barely make out the Delaware River. Passing Philly you see Wilmington's Lights before Dark Spot, which is in northern Chesapeake, and eventually you make it all the way down to DC, which I'm assuming Baltimore and DC are kind of merged in. There. I couldn't really tell anything apart. I thought this was really a nice way to illustrate what you're going to discuss.

Bill McGeeney: 2:57

Ken, you're one of the researchers who helped write the review article on Nature just month Monitoring Trends and Impacts of Light Pollution. The report appears to act as a concise summary of measurement deficiencies and impacts of light pollution. The report appears to act as a concise summary of measurement deficiencies and impacts of light pollution. I hope I got that right, ken, when I read it. So why don't you tell us what drove the impetus of this article? Why is it important?

Ken Walczak: 3:20

Yeah, the impetus was actually. There's a number of us light pollution researchers who were, over the last few years, been involved in pitching or actually proposing a satellite mission to be dedicated to observing light at night across the globe. You know, you might be familiar with that. You know the black marble image of the earth at night that's collected from a satellite that NOAA National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration manages.

Bill McGeeney: 3:48

And Ken, isn't that used for a lot of research?

Ken Walczak: 3:50

the black marble yes, and that's the thing. It's a wonderful instrument, but there's a few serious limitations. First of all, it does global maps every night, every night, so we can actually look at things changing season by season. But there's two, I would say there's two or three main problems with it is that it only it does not see blue light and, as anybody who knows anything about light at night, blue is very important and it's also becoming more dominant since the advent of LEDs. Since it doesn't see that, we don't really get a true picture of what what's changing. The other thing is it's it's resolution is somewhere near about 500 meters per pixel. I mean 500 meters pixels like an entire city block, so you can't really distinguish much more than a big blob over here and a big blob over there. I mean, it's great for a global scale, but we need better resolution if you're going to talk about, oh, how it affects migration of insects or birds or things like that, you know. And the other aspect is that only images at about 1.30 in the morning it's overpass time, which you know, as we've been talking about, like all these cities that might, especially in Europe, that might be dimming lights. Are you really seeing that late at night with the true picture. So there's some limitations to the information we have for light pollution research.

Ken Walczak: 5:02

So our last mission proposal to the European Space Agency.

Ken Walczak: 5:07

Unfortunately, a couple of months ago we found out it did not pass the final run, so we're going to try it again, but we realized in that process that it's like you know what we need to build some more consensus.

Ken Walczak: 5:18

It's all about outreach, it's all about awareness, and this article specifically is saying here's all the really important questions ecologically, environmentally, health-wise and also when it comes to social justice, when it comes to like one of the focuses is on the stability of nighttime lights in developing areas. If you don't have access to the light at night in, you know, sub-saharan Africa, for example, you know you're missing out on a certain economic and social benefit. So we can actually monitor those kind of things economic and social benefit so we can actually monitor those kind of things. We wrote this paper to encourage more researchers to see how vital it is to understand half the globe at night. So that was sort of like the idea behind it, and so we tried to pull together all the details that would maybe get an entomologist and a social scientist and everyone else really more on board with this idea. So next time we do our proposal, hopefully it'll have much more consensus on it.

Bill McGeeney: 6:15

What's been the feedback on it? Have you seen a lot of people who otherwise might not have known about or might not have heard about any of the issues you're talking about in there?

Ken Walczak: 6:24

From my experience I mean, you know, this is just my experience that you know I've presented a number of conferences, you know, like the other year presented at the AGU, the American Geophysical Union, a conference which is like literally 10,000 or more scientists come together to you know, in this conference it's huge and the amount that light pollution is mentioned is so small and we're I'm seeing a growth, I'm seeing more people be aware of it, More people in the research side saying, wow, this is something we hadn't considered before, and so that is encouraging, and that's just. You know, light pollution news didn't exist 10 years ago and there's a reason why it exists now is because I think it's becoming something that people want to hear and so, just like the research community, same thing.

Bill McGeeney: 7:09

Yeah, like I told Betty Maya, you know there's enough like we have enough news you can do a podcast on. So it's it's a huge avenue of articles that come through. We had 101 this month that I that I tracked. So, yeah, I think that's great. Yeah, go ahead, ken.

Ken Walczak: 7:25

I just want to throw in one thing, since you're referencing that photograph of the East Coast from the ISS International Space Station, if anybody's interested. There's a thing called the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth and I'll make sure to share the link. Literally every single photograph of the Earth from space that has anything to do with NASA I mean literally all the way back from the Gemini program and Mercury program all the way to today is searchable and findable on that, through that gateway. And what's really cool is you can actually search a geographic area. So I want to see, oh, what what's around. You know Chicago, I can draw a little box around Chicago and then you can even search for just nighttime images and then they'll give you everything from that's ever been shot, that's been cataloged at least, and you can start to do more than just that one image. You can actually get amazing images and it's actually really helpful in research as well.

Bill McGeeney: 8:21

That's a great tip. What was the site? Again, it's called the Gateway.

Ken Walczak: 8:26

I'll put a link, a gateway, to the astronaut photography of Earth and I'll share the link with you and anyone.

Bill McGeeney: 8:31

anyone can search and use those images last time you're on you're, you're using balloons, kind of like the chinese weather balloons to to see the lights, to see, to track the lights in indianapolis well, actually it was just out there for a race, but I didn't stay at night are you still using? You still using the balloons to identify different light sources and track lighting trends and radiance?

Ken Walczak: 8:53

Yeah, we map, like a single flight will generate about 50,000 to 60,000 images and then they have to be geo-referenced but we can actually map an entire region. So, like when we've done. We just did a flight in February over Indianapolis, another one because we wanted to look for actually tree phenology, tree health research and also urban wildlife research. We've done a number of flights in the spring and summer where there's a lot of tree cover, so we did a flight in February that we can prepare. How much does the light at night shine up when there's not tree cover? So that's why we deliberately froze ourself to do a flight in February and it is worth it. So, yeah, we're still continuing that research Very cool.

Bill McGeeney: 9:39

Well, glad to hear. In the same vein as your article, ken, past guest and immortal, john Barentine. His team put together a state of science report which I have linked in this episode page, and Barentine and the team do a great job providing an exceedingly concise view of where science is on this topic. By exceedingly concise, I believe it was like 14 pages long or thereabout very readable English Between both these articles, between your article, ken, and John's state of science report, anyone who's kind of new to the topic can really really get up to speed in no time because they both really are easy to read and they detail pretty much a great summation of where we're at. So I really hope everyone's taking a look at state of science report. I think it's like a third of it, I think, is citations, which is great because then you can chase down things. Leah, do you ever hear people reference that? Do people look at state of science report?

Lya Osborn: 10:35

yeah, I mean I might be the wrong person to ask to get a sort of representative opinion here, because I, you know, I really appreciate the work that dark sky does to you know, bringing together information that's easy to access. No, I have, I have read the state of the science and just appreciate the effort that's gone into providing that level of detail and access to research. I would say, you know it's to be totally frank, I I'm very hopeful for, for you know, kind of more bridges across the lighting design community and you know the advocacy community around light pollution, because I think we maybe got I've heard anyway I'm not part of the old guard in the lighting industry but I've heard that you know things kind of got off maybe on the wrong foot initially, the sort of sense that you know people who are advocates against light pollution just don't want any light. And you know the lighting manufacturing, you know sector is like you must have more light. And in fact you know I think now we're seeing so much cooperation and really aligned hopes and incentives and intentions.

Lya Osborn: 11:47

You know, between the advocacy community and the lighting community, you know, for instance, like on Roland, you know that was an effort between both.

Lya Osborn: 11:59

You know the IES and the ILD and a number of other lighting organizations and Dark Sky.

Lya Osborn: 12:04

So there's a lot more cooperation between them and I'm hoping that you know state of the science is widely read in the lighting design community.

Lya Osborn: 12:13

I also hope that you know some of the resources that we have can be more widely shared with you know the dark sky community and those who are advocates against light pollution, because you know there's a lot of really, I think, really helpful information from a technical perspective which you know, as you said, can sort of add to the lexicon, add to the toolkit for advocacy, including I'll just mention here, and I'll also make sure that you get a link but the IES has a lighting ready reference app which is available not only in English but I think French and Spanish as well. But you know it has some core lighting information and knowledge, little calculators. You know a lot of general knowledge, information that for a long time was only available to lighting professionals, if you remember, but they've made an effort to make that more available. So I'd say, in addition to State of the Science, some of these other resources would be a great augmentation for somebody who's looking to. You know, quickly get a sense of what's going on and you know how to take action.

Bill McGeeney: 13:10

That'll be cause a lot of that. Ies stuff is kind of behind a closed gate, right Like it's a pay gate there, a paywall. That makes it really difficult for folks to actually be able to access.

Lya Osborn: 13:20

Totally, yeah, exactly, and that's something that the light justice team we've been, we've been trying to identify, you know, where we're getting a lot of interest and really just like people wanting folks really wanting access to more information, we're doing what we can to then communicate that back to these organizations and say like, hey, people would really benefit from this. You know, maybe it's behind the paywall, but could we offer a discount, you know for for, you know, citizens rather than professionals, and so far there's been a lot of yeah, just a lot of positive response to that. So we'll, we'll keep doing what we can and, you know, see what we can do to make these resources more accessible.

Bill McGeeney: 13:58

Yeah, I think a lot of people benefit. I know, I know, I know for myself. A handful right off the bat would benefit quite well from that. So that's great to hear. I want to jump quickly to this article. There's an article where a team actually for the first time gauged the amount of light that was emitted from a public performance and that was out in Lollapalooza in Berlin, 2016. I mean, I definitely get it. You need to have artistic modern performance accompanying light shows. That's part of the experience when you go to shows. You see musical acts, that's part of it to see how the actual visual stage presents itself. That's not counting any kind of pedestrian or parking lights, but the actual light increase output was about 8% and the study looked just to look at how the musical festival impacted at night. So that was very interesting.

Bill McGeeney: 14:49

Okay, so before we leave there, I just want to bring up one last article out of China that appeared in Journal Land. So last month we had a podcast that came through that had actually talked about how there was money to be had in, say, astrotourism in dark skies, and I just want to bring this in here because, ken, you hinted at it. We still look at variables including, say, nighttime light as a growth variable for the economy. Does dark sky do anything to kind of quantify or track astrotourism dollars? Ken Nielsen.

Ken Walczak: 15:25

I don't know of anything offhand for Dark Sky International, but I know there's a report that was done a few years ago.

Ken Walczak: 15:31

You might have heard about the economic benefit of astrotourism on the Colorado Plateau, which is, you know everything from Colorado, nevada, utah, you know all that and you know they found, literally they estimated oh gosh, don't quote me on this, but it was, I think about $5.3 billion over a decade billion dollars over a decade of economic benefit from astrotourism.

Ken Walczak: 15:53

Now, you know, so that's the one side of it. You know, if you have very pristine areas and I know that I know some folks who work in everything from Nepal to you know other Kazakhstan and other areas that you know maybe don't have a lot of especially rural areas, don't have a lot of economic opportunities, and yet the thing they do have is a resource that is disappearing from the world. And so you think about yeah, on the one sense, you don't want to deprive people of technology and the modern world, in a sense, but on the other side, it's like you know, you want them to be able to value what they have and maybe even benefit from it. So in that case, until until bill gets back, you guys have any thoughts?

Lya Osborn: 16:37

I guess I would say that you know, it seems like, as with many other areas, light is just one factor among many, right, when you're considering investment in an area and you know the attempt to, you know, to bring economic benefit to an area where there's need.

Lya Osborn: 16:59

And so you know, I think I've done a lot of work with a lighting design firm that's based in Shanghai and Taipei and Shenzhen, and, you know, coming straight out of grad school, I did see a lot of lighting projects in more rural areas of China, and they often coincided with this larger push to kind of revitalize certain regions. And so lighting was just one element and I think, again, because of the nature of it and the way that the technology is advanced, it can sometimes be, I think, utilized as like a quick not a quick fix, but, you know, a very visible marker of investment, right? And so I think that's where it gets tricky Investment, I think, in this case looking at investment in the community, not detracting from its access to the night sky, and maybe even considering access to the night sky a resource and a value that can be called out and offered, a resource and a value right that can be called out and offered.

Ken Walczak: 18:10

I'm curious, might, if I ask you a question, leah? So one of the things I've always had a had conversations about and also thought about a lot is so you have developing areas, developing nations, developing economies, and you could say, well, don't do what we did, you know, don't, don't use light as a, as a, as a weapon, almost, you know, just saying, like, you know, blast our, our environment with light, learn from our mistakes. But it kind of has almost a uh kind of a colonial feel to it where it's like, oh well, you were able to light your, your environments to be able to benefit from a growth, uh, in in your economy, and why can't we? But it's like I don't know. It's a difficult and fragile kind of a conversation that you know have and I was curious if you had any ideas about that.

Lya Osborn: 18:59

Yeah, I mean, there's so much complexity there, right, it's, I think, as with any aspect of you know, how, where is the first world right now? Right, and what? What sort of benchmarks have we established, you know, in first world countries that now seem to be worth attaining, or, you know, worth worth reaching for, because they're going to bring a certain amount of stability or quality of life or economic standing, or whatever that is? It's true, there are a lot of these benchmarks that have been, I think, inadvertently set, and so it is, I think, a little too hassle, a little bit too easy to say, okay, just learn from our mistakes. Here's where we've learned better. Now, here's where we should be. Instead, circumvent all of that and meet us here. You know that's oversimplifying, right? The access to resources, you know, whatever immensely complicated set of things that allows for that journey to get there.

Lya Osborn: 20:01

So I am, alas, not somebody with all the answers here, but I, I, yeah, I agree, I think there's, there is, I think, more need, therefore, for us to be offering resources and participating in dialogue in these places. Right, offering what we can, connecting, you know, connecting across organizations and resources. I think it's just let's show up and let's participate, right, rather than saying hey, this is your problem, good luck.

Bill McGeeney: 20:30

Moving on to a, an interesting story, ken, I think you're probably aware of this. One Comes from, actually, megan Eves. He wrote the BBC article that I based it on. So it's a very interesting story and we're talking about essentially Indigenous ties to the night sky and recently, or in the past few episodes we had. Travis novitsky has a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it anyone who's interested in checking out the uh lakota people's history or the lakota people's heritage of the night sky, especially oroborialis and how the lore around that. And it's a phenomenal picture book too, because the guy's an amazing photographer. So I recommend that. Spears Dancing. But this one is going to talk about.

Bill McGeeney: 21:16

This article here is talking about a community pinched between Paraguay, uruguay and Brazil, in the brilliant Michones province of Argentina. Given the province's location in Paraguay, it's heavily influenced by Native American traditions of the Guarani people, and the community hopes to obtain a dark sky reserve, creating what they claim will be the only global place to legally protect the sky, soil and waters. I just want to pause on that for a second and say, wow, that's an incredible statement right there. Traditionally, the Tapaque Milky Way, as they would call it, is translated into the old road of the Igarani, which carries with it a not-so-unfamiliar tale whereby the Tapake serves as a path to and for the afterlife. And to explore that a little more as a hobby at Stargaze and I was telling Chris and Shane over at the actual shami podcast, shane, who's been on here before that I've been working my way through an asterisms list whereby you can attempt to find a large list of asters in the night sky, and I came across this one from the guarani. So because it's just to me it's very intriguing. It's called the story of the ray of constellation and area is our birds are kind of distant relatives to African ostriches native to South America, and contained within the boundaries of this constellation are nine Greek European constellations, with the posterior area covered by the constellation Scorpius.

Bill McGeeney: 23:04

So for my guests here, I'm going to play this little video recording and I highly recommend you at home just take a look at the video real fast. I'm going to actually push it through a little bit in here since we're running a little late on time, but you can find the link over at lightpollutionnewscom. Side note and how about this? The Guarani actually have a god that's protective of the Yerba Mate plant and siestas. In and of itself. That's pretty amazing. It's a very, very big combination right there. Let me see if I can pull this up real fast here and see if I can share this to you guys. And again, I highly recommend you at home, just take a look at this video. Is there sound?

Ken Walczak: 23:41

I'm doing it.

Bill McGeeney: 24:01

Yeah, there should be sound coming through, sorry. So what we're seeing here is we're seeing the outline of the ray and it's actually going from star by star and this is like an artistic AI illustrator type image. You'll see, within that outline you'll see the nine different constellations that most astronomers would know, like Scorpius. Then you have a slew of southern constellations and it's going to tell the tale of how the rare tried to devour two eggs that are near its beak, which are Beta Luscae and Alpha Luscae, which are two part of the stars. Then Beta Centauri and Alpha Centauri are the eggs that the actual bird has swallowed. The Guarani myth tells that the Southern Cross that holds the ray of its head to prevent it from drinking all of the water in the world and if it gets loose, we will die of drought and thirst. Very cool piece. I I love asterisms and I love, uh, the stories and the meaning that we put in kind of just in inanimate things like stars.

Ken Walczak: 25:25

It just blows my mind I always like to to say that the sky is. Before there were books, there was always the sky and you know everybody shared that book. You know, and I would like you know, I'd never seen this, you know, sky legend before and it's like, I think it's amazing because pretty much takes half the sky is like. You know, we're so used to breaking up the smaller constellations and each one has a little story and it's like this is saying you know, it's just a whole different way of approaching the sky, which you know I always appreciate. I mean, you know how, how different cultures see, see the world and in the sky in different ways.

Ken Walczak: 25:59

And if I mentioned this before, that I work with kids, mainly high school students in Chicago, and for most of them they don't even look up because there's really nothing to see in the Chicago sky. They don't even realize there's stars above their heads. And you know, and if you just lost that book, then you know we're also lost that knowledge. So you know, I'm glad they're glad they're working hard to protect that, that area.

Bill McGeeney: 26:22

And all the anthropology in there. You know the tales of whole cultures. Yeah, it's great. There's another story here the Luciano people out in the San Diego area, which are the original inhabitants of the west coast of San Diego through Los Angeles. They have a tale that the coyote actually scattered all of the glowing embers into the sky, creating the stars that illuminate our night. Creating the stars that illuminate our night. And it even anchors itself on Earth where there's a rock, the Wannawut Rock, which contains a white quartzite streak that binds the Earth to the sky via the thicket of the Milky Way. Just find that to be pretty great stuff. That came about because the community, the actual tribal lands around fallbrook, california, are supporting their attempt to become a dark sky community. So interesting things out there.

Josh Dury: 27:16

Really, really neat tales, josh, I didn't know if you're trying to yeah, there was one comment I was going to make, especially in relation to the major lunar stand stills taking place right now.

Josh Dury: 27:28

So research is going on in relation to ancient sites, but what I was going to mention there in relation to dark sky culture and heritage is, in the instance of stonehenge, the amount of light pollution from somewhere so iconic, yet so vast, and yet you have one of the uk's leading military bases, lark hill, as a part of the mod, right next to stonehenge. So, like you guys probably have seen the images but you'll see, like stonehenge and comet neowise above, only to find that you know these images are, you know, being affected by light pollution. So already in a contextual narrative for these images, you know being affected by light pollution. So already in a contextual narrative for these images, you know it really puts into perspective. You know that our ancients, four and a half thousand years ago, were watching these things and then to suddenly have that taken away from us, it really brings that cultural aspect into the picture as well. As you know starlink constellations when they pass over such a megalithic structure like stone and so, yeah, very thought-provoking yeah, and they're doing they're.

Josh Dury: 28:36

There's stuff going on, stonehenge right now, right so every 18.6 years, the moon's reaching the most extreme stations of its cycle. So, whether it's the most easterly, or, I should say, most normally or most suddenly, moon rises and moon sets. But because they occur every 18.6 years, we've got this window of opportunity now until 2025, to be observing these phenomenon. So even then, like with stonehenge, like we see the changes to landscape, so whether it's trees have grown, they're delaying the moon rises. It's all of these things which have been picked up now with astrophotography and with the study of archaeoastronomy. So that's quite interesting itself, you know, just as a purely astronomical subject, but light pollution comes into it as well. So, yeah, really, yeah, a good mixture, really, I would say well, let's go to uh, quick health news.

Bill McGeeney: 29:29

And then I want to give you guys a chance to plug yourselves On the health front. Two recent studies, one in science and one in cell stem cell, point to why the alignment of circadian clocks is so important. The source of alignment appears to derive from what researchers deem the central circadian clock, the suprachimatic nucleus area of the brain that is triggered by photoreceptors in your vision system, and listeners are already aware of that that your eyes kind of trigger something right, so that centralized clock directs a second peripheral body clock that manages cellular level body processes. It falls out of alignment when a body's centralized clock is miscued, do something like jet lag or other non-standard day-night issues such as regular shift work. Researchers in these studies believe that the alignment of two clocks will slow the pace of degeneration of bodily functions that occur with aging. Interesting stuff there. There were other articles in Health that I came across I didn't really necessarily want to discuss because I wasn't too sure on the foundation of them, but this one here talks just about the circadian rhythm and what goes on in there, which I found really interesting articles. Maybe you guys disagree, but I think they're really fun articles coming up.

Bill McGeeney: 30:48

We'll finish up the July show in a second, but before we get to that, I want to remind you at home subscribe to Light Pollution News. If you haven't already, you can just hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening, and you can also visit us over at lightpollutionnewscom. You can find us on Instagram, linkedin and Facebook, and if you're curious about any of the articles in today's show or the earlier show in a month, simply head over to lightpollutionnewscom and take a look at the show notes. If you want to see that video, derea Constellation, I highly recommend it. Go to lightpollutionnewscom and take a look. See, all the links are at the top of the show's page, so every article's in there.

Bill McGeeney: 31:24

Finally, you can reach out to me, bill, in two easy ways simply by using a free text link on today's show description via the podcast player, or you can simply email me at bill at lightpollutionnewscom. And before we start wrapping up with our feel good stories of the month, I want to give you, my guests, a chance to plug yourselves. You guys are doing awesome things and I want people to hear about them. So, leah, where can folks learn more about the work you're doing, light Justice, any of the activities you're part of?

Lya Osborn: 32:00

Yeah, thanks again for this opportunity.

Lya Osborn: 32:01

It's just great to have chatted with you all and you know really hope that our listeners are going to, you know, be excited to look through all the amazing resources that you're sharing in these articles.

Lya Osborn: 32:08

Light Justice we've got a website up it's lightjusticeorg, and we do have resources available there for folks who are interested in you know, learning more, are interested in projects that consider light justice. We also are hoping to soon make available recordings of two light justice symposiums that we have co-hosted with the IAS um, looking at both outdoor and indoor lighting and its impact on uh, on humanity and our planet. So go to lightjusticeorg for more information. And you know we're also excited uh myself especially to lead folks to the work of you know others in the field, like going back to the mythology around the night sky. Dr Aparna Venkatesan has done some really wonderful research that I'm hoping to add to our list of resources. Lisa Heshong, when we're talking about you know you know human visual development has done some wonderful work there. So we'll be making all that information available on the resources page there.

Bill McGeeney: 33:11

Excellent, thank you for that plug. Hopefully listeners definitely check that out. And, leah, you talked about the mythology part, but I'm doing the astrosy. I picked up these ridiculously large binoculars like they're 20 pounds and I got a huge mount that you would use for production probably for production video to hold these. And I think one of the most overlooked, easiest and coolest things to do in the night sky is is to look either for asterisms, which are just things that people saw, or be able to like skim across and see if you see anything that you find really intriguing, just in the shape and formations of the stars. And it's just, it's so cool and you'll come across like I remember the other night in I forget which constellation I came across a little tiny w, just a little tiny, concise w, just randomly. I wasn't expecting that and it's just one of those things where, like, your brain automatically turns it into something and it, I don't know. It's like some some boyhood excitement there. I don't know why it's so exciting to see these little objects up there.

Lya Osborn: 34:17

That's so beautiful, I mean, I think that's really that gets to the heart of why it's critical for us to protect this shared resource, right, Like, as Ken said, this is a book that we all share, that we share with our ancestors and our ancestors' ancestors, you know, to the earliest.

Bill McGeeney: 34:34

We share this book with all creatures, right and so you know Leah, here in the US it played a role Right.

Lya Osborn: 35:01

And so, leah, here in the U S, it played a role. It wasn't just something that you know, we, we look at for stories, but it played a role in the underground railroad, played a role in people's lives. It wasn't just you know some heritage or you know somewhat religious aspect, but actually directed people and show people how to to get to freedom. In Taiwan there is. I wonder if next time you look up at the night sky, you might also add this to it. So in Chinese history, kind of in the relationship with the night sky, the sky is actually where all the gods live, right, and so it's actually divided into 28 mansions, like look at it architecturally, but there are stories right In each one and you can look up and be like, oh, what are they up to? Tonight, one of my favorite festivals is actually the moon festival in in chinese tradition, and I love that there are festivals specifically about you know the sky and what's happening there, kind of connecting us to it yeah, I love that you are also writing your own.

Lya Osborn: 35:57

You know your own sky, lore right, yeah, so cool.

Bill McGeeney: 36:01

All right, josh, where can people find your photos? Tell us, how do we, how do we connect visually with the, not just the environment, but the night?

Josh Dury: 36:11

yeah, sure thing, bill. Well, thank you very much for having me on today's show. If anyone would like to see any examples of my astrophotography, you can go over to my website, which is wwwjoshjoryphotomediacom, so from there you can see the sorts of astrophotography I do, as well as advocacy work, and so there's a whole mixture to see there ken.

Bill McGeeney: 36:31

Where can people learn more about everything that you do, sir, well? Or maybe just one thing whatever you want to give us, yeah, I would always point people to darkskyorg.

Ken Walczak: 36:41

You, you know, like you know. But also, if you, if you want to learn about what we're doing here in the Chicago area, you know you can go to darkskychicagoorg. So that's our local chapter and you know, we're trying to learn from other folks as well as teach by example. I mean, when we have a success, we like to put a story up on our website and maybe that can help someone else go. Oh, that's how you did that, you know. I mean, we're, like I said, and we're also trying to learn from other chapters as well, like you know. How can we move this all forward to the best 2045 we can have?

Bill McGeeney: 37:13

Yeah, that'll be great. I'm looking forward to that great 2045.

Bill McGeeney: 37:16

So, let's make it happen. Let's make it a real thing. Okay, so let's get to some fun pieces that we honestly don't get enough of these, and I'm really excited to have them here. Cosmic baseball have you guys ever heard of? Like cosmic bowling? I think this is big back in the 90s, to show my age here. Essentially it's like essentially you're playing, you're bowling, in black light, right? So colonial heights, virginia, the tri-city, chili peppers made history on j June 1st as the first baseball game we played under black light, exclusively under black light. Given the success of the game, they look to repeat this later in the season. So there's a little backstory here.

Bill McGeeney: 37:55

The team employed lighting professionals and a budget to the tune of $100,000 to create the event, although the actual price far exceeded that budget. The team used 18 500-watt black lights to provide a uniform, shadow-free black lighting experience. I can't speak to how healthy it is to bathe players and fans in black light for a couple hours, but everyone who participated appeared to enjoy it. It seemed to be a big hit and unfortunately, the event was not without its without challenges. Batters complained about not being able to pick up the ball spin and fielders in the outfield had difficult time trying to engage pop flies, but beyond that, perhaps it's a new avenue for nighttime baseball lighting. Ken, I don't know if you're a baseball fan, but I feel like the red sox, their franchise. They're in trouble right. Maybe they can go with black light for the next few games and maybe just do it in the dark, I don't know.

Ken Walczak: 38:48

Stadium lights are notorious for giving off a lot of light.

Bill McGeeney: 38:52

Yeah, I'll say this for stadium lights, cause everyone I don't know when last time any of you guys have gone to a sporting event. Every stadium has a massive amount of led screens. Now, right, everything's an led screen. Every single where you look is a full throttle led experience. Down at a citizens bank park for the phillies, it actually dimmed when the sun went down. So, considering you have like no less than I don't like 30 led boards looking at you, it actually kind of was nice. It wasn't dark by any means, but you didn't have the daytime brightness storm, which actually made a difference. Next time you guys head out to Auckland, maybe you can pick up some collectible coins. New Zealand Postal Service, the NZ Post, released a coin set that commemorates the Ken help me here the Wairarapa, I don't know, I'm not gonna the same way, I think, is the dark sky reserve.

Bill McGeeney: 39:51

One side of the coin has a 45 degree angle of the Milky way going across any Southern lights are placed on the other side in an orange red glow from the surface. Now, while the coins are technically a dollar to set, retails for about 425,. New Zealand two, 61 USD, despite the price. And they sure do look nice only 500 a minute, and it's designed by helen perkins. Cool things, cool little collectibles, that. What a way to commemorate.

Bill McGeeney: 40:15

You know something interesting happening in your country with a dark sky coin. And do you? You love natural light? Well, natural light, of course you do. Do you love natural night? Now we're talking, and you live in Nevada. Well, why not show up with the Saved Stars Skies license plate? I know this has been out there for just a little bit, but it came into production about a month ago and it debuted back in May. Initially, the actual license plate features a family peering at the star of rich sky with a Big Dipper asterism right above them. Portions of the proceeds go to Nevada Wilderness to help protect, of the many things, nevada, its natural night. What a strange place. Nevada, the place of the sphere, also has a Save Stars Skies license plate. Hey, keep on fighting, guys Love it.

Bill McGeeney: 41:02

New designations this month we include the Kawara-Gibson Dark Sky Reserve in Queenstown, new Zealand, which is the seventh location in New Zealand to have a dark sky designation. Moab is a dark sky community officially, chickalinga. Australia is the first dark sky community down there. Let's finish up with this little piece here. Australia is the first dark sky community down there. Let's finish up with this little piece here. So there's an article in the Guardian from a lady, annabelle Abbs, and she is the author of a book called Sleepless. She wrote this piece that and I have a hypothesis about our incessant fear of the night and while it's probably a good thing to have an underlying fear of dark, same way, say, to have an underlying fear of dark the same way say, to have an underlying fear of heights.

Bill McGeeney: 41:44

The less we encounter dark, the more we are unprepared to handle it, where our fear becomes less about the rationality and more about the crippling immobilization. Right, I used to have fear of heights. I still do, to a point, but years of climbing have kind of conditioned me to manage that fear, understand my risks, ascertain a mental capacity to actually control that fear. Well, abs appears to, in very much the same way, have flexed that muscle to manage and control any fear of dark that she may have. It speaks to a variety of positive nighttime experiences, including night swimming and hiking and a newfound appreciation of the uniqueness of unlit night. But her most important thesis actually derives from this quote, and I love this.

Bill McGeeney: 42:23

We have a lot of good quotes today. Here's a good one. When we welcome darkness, we give nocturnal life a better chance of survival. Stars and meteors are clearer. Moreover, we keep our night vision working, we sleep better and enjoy improved mental health, and we encounter our rewired selves and discover all its transcendent and adventurous guises. I think that truly sums up the mission of Dark Sky Advocates and Defenders of Natural Night.

Bill McGeeney: 42:52

I hope everyone here in the Northern Hemisphere has a great start to their summer. Conversely, as the southern constellations of Rhea and Matariki rise in the Southern Hemisphere, I have a nice seasonal start to the winter, or New Zealand New Year. I want to thank nations of Rhea and Matariki rise in the Southern hemisphere. I have a nice seasonal start to the winter, or New Zealand new year. I want to thank you at home for staying with us today and a big thanks to our supporter and live stream guests today. Steve Americanda, thank you for hanging out with us. It's great to see a nice audience member down there and want to thank today's guest. Couldn't have asked for a better panel. Leah Osborne, josh Dury, ken Walchuk. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Bill McGeeney: 43:28

Thanks for inviting me again yeah, anytime you guys want to come back, just let me know.

Lya Osborn: 43:32

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Josh Dury: 43:34

Thank you, Bill. Well, thank you guys.

Ken Walczak: 43:37

You got to have more lighting designers on. I think they're the ones where they have a lot to say about this and and we need to talk to you. So, Leah, thank you so much for also, you know, being on.

Lya Osborn: 43:47

Absolutely. I mean, this is, this is a shared passion of ours, right? So I could talk anybody's ear off about this, and also just so happy to partner with advocates. You know we, we should be working together more closely.

Bill McGeeney: 44:00

Yeah, I'd love to have more lighting designers on, so open call out there. If you're a lighting designer, feel free to reach out bill at light pollution newscom. Anyone who supports the show will have access to a link for future live recordings too. So if you're a supporter out there, like Steve, you can check the show. You'll be able to have a show link out there for supporting the show and actually come here and watch the live version of the show and watch me stutter and walk around in verbal circles for about an hour or two. As a reminder, Light Pollution News is recorded towards the end of the month, Given the upcoming Independence Day holiday here in the US.

Bill McGeeney: 44:35

We've recorded on the 23rd of June and this month we split the shows. Give this a try for a bit. See how it goes, you listen and let me know how you feel about it. Hopefully it works for you. You can find all the details of this show lightpollutionnewscom. If you have any other thoughts or questions, just want to say hi, feel free to text us via the show notes there's a text line in there or drop us a line at bill at lightpollutionnewscom. Thank you again. I'm your host, Bill McGeaney. Always remember only shine a light where it's needed. Thank you.