Where Did All the Stars Go? How Light Pollution Is Stealing the Night
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WHERE DID ALL THE STARS GO? HOW LIGHT POLLUTION IS STEALING THE NIGHT BY MARK BINELLI The Milky Way, seen from Texas’ Big Bend National Park, one of the darkest places in the United States MEN’S JOURNAL 126 DECEMBER 2013 WHERE DID ALL THE STARS GO? HE LARGEST OPTICAL TELESCOPE in North America belongs to McDonald Observatory, which sits atop a mountain in West Texas. Astronomers have T come here to peer into black holes millions of light-years away, massive enough to contain 17 billion of our suns. To arrive at the observatory, they’ve most likely made a three-hour drive east from El Paso, through an alien desert terrain of spiny yucca trees and severe, distant mesas. When McDonald was built in the late 1930s, the most famous observatory in the United States was still Mount Wilson in Pasadena, California, at the time possessor of the largest telescope in the world. But even back then, light pollution from Los Angeles was beginning to wash out the night sky. So when a wealthy bachelor from Paris, Texas, named William J. McDonald left his banking fortune to the Univer- sity of Texas in 1926, saying he wanted the school to build a telescope big enough to peer into the very gates of heaven and see if anyone was there — in the paraphrasing of longtime McDonald Observatory employee Bill Wren — an initial site on the outskirts of Austin was wisely rejected. Instead, the trustees turned to West Texas, which to this day remains one of the most isolated, indigenously eccentric parts of the United States. No Country for Old Men was filmed out here, and local wildlife includes the javelina, a furry, piglike creature that can be spotted scurrying into the tall grass off Dark Sky Drive, the road wending its way up to McDonald. Wren greets me in the parking lot. He’s been working at the observatory photograph by BRAD GOLDPAINT DECEMBER 2013 127 MEN’S JOURNAL were dealing with,” Krupp told The Los Angeles Times. “The stars were in fact so unfamiliar, they called us wondering what happened.” Local police reported similar calls in which residents asked if the quake might have been caused by a curious “silver cloud” in the sky. This turned out to be the Milky Way — which, today, two-thirds of the U.S. population and one-fifth of the world’s cannot see. How did our own solar system become so unfamiliar as to now seem like an alien menace? The short answer is light pollution: the fact that much outdoor lighting used at night is wildly inefficient, overly bright, poorly targeted, improperly shielded, and, in many cases, completely unnecessary. Dark-sky advocates don’t exactly love the “pollution” part of the term. “That’s the most accurate description of what’s going on, but people hear it and think I’m going to chain myself to the nearest streetlamp,” mutters Wren, who has become one of the leading dark-sky evangelists This 2012 in the country. Still, the net ef- image showing fects are undeniably environ- Africa, Asia, mental. Light pollution not only and Australia depicts the scope douses the night sky to the point of the global of unrecognizability for much of light problem: the world, but also represents a With more than feckless waste of energy, with 50 percent of the world’s the end result being more green- population now house gases released into the for more than 20 years. A bearded, white- most completely camouflaged living in cities atmosphere. haired 58-year-old, he walks with a wooden by the darkness. If Wren hadn’t and towns, the The U.S. spends $11 billion Earth can never cane thanks to a teenage motorcycle ac- pointed the place out, I would truly go dark. each year on unnecessary out- cident. The hair and cane make him look have never even noticed it. door lighting, according to the older, though he has a lean, handsome face. International Dark-Sky Asso- We make our way up to the metal cat- IKE THE professional astronomers ciation, which sounds like an organization walk circling one of the white observatory working at McDonald Observatory, that should be worried about keeping James domes, which affords a spectacular view L the amateurs at Limpia Crossing, Bond tied to a chair in a volcanic lair but is of the surrounding landscape. Two thou- and the hundreds of tourists drawn to actually the leading advocacy group dedi- sand feet below, there’s Fort Davis, an old weekly “star parties” in the observatory’s cated to combating light pollution. The be- garrison town where Buffalo Soldiers were outdoor amphitheater, I’ve come to Texas havior of nocturnal animals, the IDA points stationed just after the Civil War. Closer to to see the darkness. Across the country, out, is also negatively affected by gratuitous the mountain, a rustic development of ap- as cities sprawl into suburbs and suburbs outdoor lighting, and scientists have even proximately 100 houses stretches over the metastasize into exurbs, with the amount linked serious human health risks (includ- foothills. A good number of the residents, of artificial lighting exploding alongside ing breast cancer) to excessive nighttime Wren tells me, are amateur astronomers, every new McMansion, strip mall, and exposure to bright, artificial light. drawn to the area for its pristine night skies. superhighway, the night sky, in its purest “It’s not like a species going extinct,” Sure enough, a closer look reveals that many form, is increasingly becoming an endan- Wren says. “The sky isn’t going anywhere, of the homes boast miniature observatory gered species. If you live in a decent-size and we aren’t harming the stars. But we are domes at the edges of their driveways, or metropolitan area, chances are you rarely encapsulating ourselves in these bubbles of else flat-topped sheds with sliding roofs. glimpse any but a handful of the brightest light around our major population centers At the moment, though, I can’t make stars and planets. A clear view of the solar that make it impossible to see the stars at out any of these particulars, because night system — and that awesome, unmooring, night. And the consequences for that . has fallen, and the development, Limpia sublime, occasionally terrifying feeling that well, I have no idea. But we’re losing some- Crossing, is almost entirely unlit. There are comes over us when we bear witness to the thing ineffable. Mystical. Would van Gogh no streetlights on the winding roads, just vastness of the universe and recognize our have been able to paint Starry Night today? curbside reflectors that flash headlights infinitesimal place in it — had been a rou- I’m not sure. Saint-Rémy, the town where back at drivers, warning them of turns. tine nocturnal experience for the bulk of he painted it, has some of the worst light And none of the houses seem to have illu- human history. Now it’s become rarefied pollution in France.” minated porches or driveway lights. The and, for some, unimaginable. Talk of “ineffable, mystical” loss might only dim glow leaks from the odd living Ed Krupp, the director of Los Angeles’ sound a tad nebulous and abstracted. room window. Otherwise, a development Griffith Observatory for the past four I thought so — until I stood on that cat- COURTESYNASAOF ranging over hundreds of acres remains al- decades, has said that in 1994, after the walk, as the twilight faded to pitch, and Northridge earthquake knocked out much looked up. We were standing in one of the Contributing editor Mark Binelli wrote of the city’s power, the observatory began darkest places in the United States. The about Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman in to receive panicked phone calls about “the seven-county region surrounding McDon- the August issue. strange sky.” “We finally realized what we ald Observatory has passed strict lighting MEN’S JOURNAL 128 DECEMBER 2013 LIGHT POLLUTION ordinances that have helped to make the of the big domes. There are about 3,000 N THE CENTURIES preced- area “the dark-sky capital of Texas,” in the stars out tonight, versus the dozen or so ing the Industrial Revolution, words of Wren, whose advocacy played a key you might see in downtown Austin. Those “I evening appeared fraught with role in getting those laws on the books: At closest to the horizon shimmer like flecks menace,” the historian A. Roger Ekirch 28,000 square miles, it’s the largest contigu- of tinsel; farther up, they’re more fixed and writes in his lively cultural history of the ous space in North America legislatively set intense, some as tiny as pinpricks, others night, At Day’s Close. Darkness brought with aside to protect dark skies. The area includes thick as pearls. I see shooting stars and sat- it threats both real and imagined: murderers the gargantuan Big Bend National Park, the ellites. The white streak of the Milky Way and bandits, witches and demons, pestilen- darkest park in the continental U.S., which looks like a gaseous bruise. I think about tial night “fogges” and “vapours” thought runs along the border with Mexico — big how I’m looking up at thousands of violent to carry sickness and death. “All forms of enough, at 800,000 acres, to hold nearly thermonuclear reactions, taking place tril- artificial illumination — not just lamps but the entire state of Rhode Island. lions of miles away. torches and candles — helped early on to I live in New York City; before that, De- Down here, though, it’s very peaceful.