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Light Pollution
A menace to Astronomers and now a "Statutory Nuisance"
The term "light pollution" means unnecessary or inappropriate lighting, usually in combination with muck in the air which results in the sky being less BLACK than it should be. When you're trying to make astronomical observations, what you can really do without is smog lit up by bad lighting causing a haze of mankiness where there should rightly be clear darkness. Stars should be seen, not murk.
Astronomers will go on about this at some considerable length, and there are some truly impressive photographs of BAD LIGHTING online. I've included a few links to some of these well-written and spectacularly photographed features.
www.galaxypix.com/lightpol/index.htm
www.croydonastro.org.uk/lights.htm
www.sao.arizona.edu/FLWO/LIGHT/pollution.html
www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/44/lightpoll.html
www.pha.jhu.edu/~atolea/second/page1.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast01nov_1.htm
www.dancaton.physics.appstate.edu/NCDarkSkies/BadLight/BadLighting.htm
www.nps.gov/chcu/stewardship.htm
www.volt.org/Geteducated/Trespass.html
www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/nlpip/lightinganswers/lightpollution/lightTrespass.asp
www.sandfordgroup.com/editoriallibrary/parks_library/light_trespass.html
http://whyfiles.org/shorties/055darksky/index.html
www.rasc.ca/light/print/ida-let.htm
It's worth pointing out that astronomers aren't at war against lighting, and the main objects of criticism are bad lighting. It's also quite rare to hear of astronomers taking direct action by shooting out the lights. Campaigning against bad lighting does some good, but it is a bit like trying to save animals of endangered species while some other people are still eating them.
There are still some places on earth with an impressively dark sky, but these are generally further away from civilisation than a year ago, and that's generally true year-on-year. The flipside of this is that people are increasingly likely to be impressed when you show them the night sky somewhere it's reasonably dark, as many people have never really seen the night sky! See basic astronomy
Last checked 2008/12/25 and found no Bad Links