Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is “noctalgia.” In general, it means “sky grief,” and it captures the collective pain we are experiencing as we continue to lose access to the night sky.
It’s frustrating how many people have security lights aimed wrong. They’re often aimed high, wasting light to the sky, and they’re often mounted low, blinding you walking into your own home and leaving you vulnerable.
Or those backyard street lights bright enough an airplane could land with!
The sad irony is that with no around to monitor the property, these [in]security lights are often just providing light to any thieves. If you see flashlights bobbing in a yard, it’s suspicious. If you see someone walking through someone else’s yard, it might just be the owner. If you light the yard and you aren’t around to look, do the thieves make a sound?
Be nice if everyone just used infrared and/or motion detection. There’s no reason to have outdoor lights on all night.
This. I’m visually impaired and actually need a lot of light to operate normally.
At one point in my life I lived in a large building where all the hallways were operated by infrared sensors. It was honestly pretty cool to just walk around and get the light I needed without pressing any buttons.
I’ve often thought about how neat it would be if we could do same for outdoor spaces.