Light Pollution Reflection / Refraction Number 20

Posted August 20, 2008

WARNING:

I guarantee my reflections and refractions will create controversy and confrontation; and quite likely I'll step on many toes, but it's time to be brutally honest.

"The wheels are always turning, Norton!"

I'm writing this Reflection and Refraction from the third floor of the local hospital - no, not the psych ward, though I'm sure some astronomers would have it so - permanently.

It's my 4th day being sequestered here whilst waiting for surgery to remove my Io* - a long-suffering, aching, sulfurous, bilious, erupting organ of no more use to me on Monday, August 18th. The last time I ate a morsel of food was 93 hours ago and counting... And YES, I AM counting!! Here's a view of Io from the Galileo spacecraft.

Whilst here, tethered to my IV meds and fluids, I'm working hard (hardly working?) on dark skies, after all I AM the dark sky authority, you know! As Ralph Kramden, the ever optimistic, scheme-making, bus driver often said to Ed on that great classic TV show, THE HONEYMOONERS, "The wheels are always turning, Norton!"

More importantly, every nurse, technician, custodian, and doctor entering my room risks being proselytized ever so persuasively by my dark sky sermons. Indeed, several have even been converted, HEEE-aled as it were, of their light polluted ways, having finally "seen" the light (way too much of it!), and promised to turn off, PERMANENTLY, any and all unnecessary lights on their own property and elsewhere.

So, what have YOU done about dark skies whilst I've been lazily lying here all doped up with pain killers and nearly a dozen other meds most costly?...Oh, don't get me started on BIG McPharma! For goodness sake I'm in the hospital, so don't give me any excuses, exceptions, or compromises like..."Oh, Stargeezer, I'm too busy, just too busy, I can't help rid the world of light pollution!"

Here's a thought: Perhaps we astronomers should hold ourselves to a higher level, hold ourselves accountable for the number of lights we get turned off - permanently. No lights turned out, no time at the eyepiece! You want observing time? Earn it, by turning off a certain number of lights every month, permanently.

Perhaps if every astronomer were apportioned - rationed - time at the eyepiece by the number of lights turned out, permanently, s/he'd be more likely to get involved, to step up, to become a true dark sky activist! I can hear my mother: "Oh, no, Jackie, there'll be NO photons for you tonight, not till you've finished the food on your plate and turned off some lights...permanently!"

Or perhaps our efforts to turn off lights, permanently, could, no, should become a national astronomical competition: which club / society / organization OR individual can claim the most lights turned out permanently in a given period of time? Stop making such a big deal out of how many Messier objects we've all observed and start making a big deal out of how many lights we've turned off--permanently! Point blank, there'll be no more Messier objects when the sky is completely light polluted!

Of course, we could spice up the competition a smidgen or a trifle, a lick or a dash, with some real prizes or at least an honor or two sprinkled here and there. Perhaps the Annual Stargeezer Dark Sky Award. After all, Jack Horkeimer - Star Gazer, offers an annual astronomical award... Oh, the ideas are endless... All you have to do is think about it...like I am, lying here in my hospital bed. Again, what are you doing about dark skies??

Perhaps the astroglossies could be coerced into stepping up to help ("Oh, golly no, Stargeezer, it'd be unseemly, it would be untoward, unpropitious, for our highly-evolved, advert-cluttered pages to be involved in such inappropriate actions and dark sky doings"). Astroglossies: You should be, need to be, our dark sky nexus at the forefront of our actions!

Or perhaps all the national astronomy orgs could get together, cooperate, get involved in dark sky issues, and organize such a competition: there are thousands of astronomers out here in the hinterland whose night skies are brightening by the minute as the coastal philosophies and ideals of growth, Growth, GROWTH rush steadily inland like uncontrolled plague and pestilence. Just because east coast, west coast and southland nighttime skies are all but hopeless, doesn't mean that we astronomers out here in the far outback are totally hope-less about light pollution.

Or perhaps the BIG, money-soaked IDA could spend some of it's loot collected from the lighting industry on a nationwide competition, complete with an advertising campaign, to get astronomers out into their neighborhoods to darken the night sky by turning off all unnecessary lights...and yes, permanently! Again, lighting ordinances and laws are NOT the solution to light pollution! It has to be a door-to-door, eyeball-to-eyeball, neighbor-to-neighbor campaign.

Well, here come the nurses to drag me off to the operating room, kicking and screaming... Whilst under anesthesia I'll try to think of some other ways to turn off lights......permanently, of course. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-sev..., nine...si.........

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*Io. a moon of Jupiter, is the astronomical word I'm using to describe the offending organ, my gall bladder. Imagine all the biliousness that occurs on Io every day. Alas, a good geology-type like me should be used to carrying stones / rocks around with him all day.

Sunny Days and Milky Way Nights.

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