Parts of America Can Still See the Stars
City dims lights to see vivid night sky -- and sometimes details on the ground.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Stores in a new mall here found a way to get around one of the USA's toughest lighting ordinances. That's how Chris Luginbuhl sees it anyway.
The stores hung big round globes inside their front doors that shine bright white light outside on the sidewalk and beyond. Retailers think lights attract customers like moths, Luginbuhl says, even though these "glare bombs" actually make it harder to see.
They also waste light — and energy — shining it into the night sky, he says. The lights of most urban areas in the USA erase the Milky Way and many stars from nighttime views.
"People have become estranged from the night," Luginbuhl says. "We're trying to remind people that darkness is a natural condition, not something pathological that needs fixing."
Part of Luginbuhl's job as an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory here is to keep the night sky dark — or starry — and he has help. A movement to promote ways to keep the sky dark may still be small, but when a growing number of cities and towns study how to cut glaring lights and save energy costs, they look to this city of 58,000 south of the Grand Canyon as the model.
After Luginbuhl and John Grahame, co-founder of a local dark-sky coalition, complained about the mall lights, city officials got the developer to try getting the stores to change them.
"The vast majority of people grow up in a city and don't know what a dark sky looks like," says David Crawford, co-founder of the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson. "I've never seen anybody who wasn't deeply impressed, their souls struck almost, by being out in a really dark place."
A half-century-old campaign
There's passion about dark skies here, in no small part because of the observatories that for decades have quietly lobbied for pristine viewing of the stars. Lowell Observatory was the first here in 1894. Percival Lowell came from the East looking for life on Mars. A Lowell astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930.
Next year, Flagstaff will celebrate 50 years of campaigning to protect dark skies. Signs proclaim Flagstaff is the "world's first international dark-sky city," and people are proud of it, Grahame says.
