In fact, this may be the most meaningful potential of LEDs: the ability for a community to control when, where, at what levels, and in which colors its lights shine. A public space like Trafalgar Square could be lit more brightly during rush hour, then dimmed as the night progresses, the lights not only connected to one another but to the surrounding streetlights and commercial lights. Anywhere in the world, LED streetlights could be programmed to rise and fall in brightness depending on the time of night or time of year. They could even be turned off during bird migrations, to reduce the number of birds that are disoriented by the lights and ultimately killed in collisions with reflective and illuminated windows.
Up to now, LED public lighting has largely not been part of any comprehensive plan to curtail and control nighttime illumination. Most LED installations have simply replaced older, inefficient “dumb” electric lighting with newer “dumb” LEDs and thus made light pollution worse. The main reason? Because LED lighting is cheaper, we tend to use more of it—a literally shining example of the Jevons paradox. Even as awareness of light pollution grows, we aren’t yet taking advantage of LED technology’s full potential.
As an astronomer, things just keep getting brighter and brighter until the only telescopes left for us will be space telescopes.
Dont forget the 10,000 starlinks leaving streaks across every telescope’s field of view!
While stargazing a few weeks ago I was surprised how many sneaky starlinks popped up, but also how much their brightness varied. Some were so apparently dim I questioned if I was actually seeing them or imagining streaks similar to the others I’d seen.
I was out there long enough they all seemed to go away. Was kinda fun to realize the sun was far enough under the horizon they couldn’t reflect sunlight to me.
But yeah, fuck polluting space just because nobody’s there to stop you.
And besos making his own version
Has he managed to get some out there on that weird chode looking rocket of his? (Not like ratboy’s compensation machine is much better)
This would be mighty helpful around residential areas where streetlights now provide vast areas of flat yellow light right perfectly aligned to shine where my head hits the pillow.
Ive seriously considered petitioning for streetlight sized lampshades to block the light from hitting the houses in the area and only shining it down onto the ground where it’s needed, since they wouldn’t require replacing every streetlight, merely installing a cone of shame to each one that’s near a house.
Sorry modern technology isn’t capable of fantasy shit like special LAMPSHADES!? FOR LIGHTS??!? What are you out of your damn mind?
In the words of emineminem
“Now this looks like a job for me”
Just gotta get a welder light enough to drag up a lamp post
you would be into urban dance music wouldn’t you?
I am of that generation, unfortunately one of the reasons why I get angry at street lights lmao
Back in my day we either danced or we had music one or the other and we NEVER did either in urban areas, it was much safer.
edit to be fair under extreme circumstances such as women being exchanged between families dancing and music could occur together yes, but it was different
Most LEDs use phosphors to emit white light over a broad spectrum. Slightly more expensive RGB LED lighting could be tuned to avoid disruption to wildlife as much as possible and could be easier to filter out. Although selectively dimming and on/off, as outlined in the article, would be even more impactful.
somebody needs to write a kids song about how the coolest thing about L-E-Ds is A-Gen-Cy!
Ours turn off around midnight. That probably helps a fair bit. Changing brightness does seem like an interesting idea though, probably better to have them dim before all turning off. At least my street is pitch black but I think main roads remain turned on. Live in urban sprawl between 2 cities so even with our street off there is still loads of light pollution.
