#lightpollution — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #lightpollution, aggregated by home.social.
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What it looks like to live next to a sprawling #Datacenter
Aug. 19, 2026
#NoDatacenters #Datacenters #LowellMA #AshburnVA #VernonCA #NewCarlisleIN #MidlothianTX #PocatelloID #Utah #ImperialCA #StoneRidgeVA #DatacenterMoratorium #NoisePollution #LightPollution
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Clips from an email advertisement by the German rail that suggests using the train to get to one of Germany's International Dark Sky Places.
Love it! 🤩
#DarkSkyInternational #Nature #Rhön #Sternenpark #SternenparkRhön #SternenparkEifel #SternenparkWesthavelland #Astronomy #LightPollution #Astrotourism #Tourism
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Perseids in the Vosges. I spent two nights in the Vosges mountains during the Perseid meteor shower. My new blog post features photos, text, and a soundscape.
https://www.silberspur.de/blogs/read/128
#Perseids #MeteorShower #Meteor #ShootingStars #Vosges #Astrophotography #Nature #Soundscape #artificialLightAtNight #alan #Astronomy #Sky #NightSky #Soundscape #SoundRecording #lightpollution #timelapse
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🎉 Delighted to share upcoming events associated with the release of #TransformingNight 🌌💡🌃🛰️ from University of Washington Press
#LightPollution #ArtificialLight #ALAN #Night #Darkness #LightJustice
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Reflect Orbital's proposed mirror constellation would make space 16 times brighter — astronomers are alarmed
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-brightened-night-sky-nobody-actually-wanted
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Reflect Orbital's proposed mirror constellation would make space 16 times brighter — astronomers are alarmed
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-brightened-night-sky-nobody-actually-wanted
A new study modelling Reflect Orbital's proposed constellation of giant orbital mirrors finds their light pollution would be severe. A single 54 metre satellite would appear four magnitudes brighter…
#science #lightpollution #astronomy -
Reducing night lights in cities has ecological effects https://phys.org/news/2026-08-night-cities-ecological-effects.html
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DarkSky and allies ask the FCC to reverse its approval of the Reflect Orbital “space mirror”
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Any folks interested in astronomy in Ventura County:
"Save Our Starry Nights
Why light pollution matters and what we can do about it
Celeste Andersen, JD
Save Our Stars, WE WatchDavid Newman
City Councilmember and Former Mayor, City of Thousand OaksFriday, August 21, 7pm PT (via Zoom)
Find out:
• What is light pollution?
• How it affects us all
• What are the solutions?
• Local ordinances and efforts
• Easy actions you can take
Please register for the forum in advance here:
https://tinyurl.com/saveourstarrynights"#astronomy #lightpollution #VenturaCounty #ThousandOaks #ConejoValley
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Hey #LightPollution peeps, @patendernacht is now on Mastodon 🎉
(posting in German)
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Light pollution interferes with traditional religious practices: “Light pollution does not shift Ts’eit HaKokhavim by more than a minute but significantly changes Motsa’ei Shabbat. In fact, light pollution causes the conditions of Motsa’ei Shabbat to never be met on at least some nights in every population center.”
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It's early August and US academics everywhere are losing it,
But that means it's book release month!
🎉🥳🌠🍾🥂
#TransformingNight 🌌💡🌃🛰
from University of Washington Press! -
When cities transition to LED streetlights, the results can sometimes worsen urban skyglow. But it does not have to be that way. Our latest post compares three global cities that successfully modernized their public lighting while drastically reducing light pollution.
Tucson proved the value of reducing total lumen output to avoid the rebound effect. Vienna demonstrated that strict optical shielding and zero upward light can cut streetlight skyglow by 75 percent over a decade. Metz pioneered ecological spectral management, using ultra-warm 1000 K LEDs and smart sensors to protect river wildlife.
Learn how these three strategies create a blueprint for dark-sky-friendly urban lighting: http://www.darkskyconsulting.com/blog/tucson-vienna-metz-a-tale-of-three-cities
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How headlights got brighter, whiter, and more blinding after dark
Excerpt: "Older halogen setups, particularly the reflector housings common through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, produced a comparatively soft, warm beam with limited reach. They were inefficient, generated excessive heat, and scattered light somewhat indiscriminately. But they tended to fail gracefully. Visibility wasn’t exceptional, but neither was the likelihood of accidentally assaulting an oncoming driver’s eyes.
"Modern systems have an entirely different engineering goal. LEDs consume less power, last far longer, and can emit vastly more light from a much smaller package. Their compactness allows designers to create thinner headlights and more aggressive front-end styling, but it also means the light source itself becomes intensely concentrated. Automakers have additionally shifted toward cooler color temperatures—closer to daylight white than the yellowish glow of old halogens—because we perceive these wavelengths as sharper and more detailed at night.
"The downside is that blue-white light also produces more glare and discomfort, especially in rain or on poorly marked roads. Add in the current #SUV and #PickupTruck boom, where headlights are mounted higher off the ground than on older sedans, and even correctly aimed low beams can shine directly into the eyeline of drivers in smaller vehicles.
"Then there’s the escalation effect. Modern vehicles are heavier, faster, quieter, and packed with driver-assistance systems that encourage confident nighttime driving at highway speeds [and encourage drivers to STOP paying attention]. To support that, manufacturers continuously increase forward illumination distance and beam intensity.
"Adaptive matrix headlights, which can selectively dim portions of the beam to avoid dazzling other drivers while maintaining maximum illumination elsewhere, are theoretically the technological solution to the problem. In practice, though, adoption remains inconsistent, regulations vary by country, and many vehicles still rely on brute-force brightness rather than precision. The result is that nighttime driving increasingly feels less like navigating through darkness and more like surviving a rolling photonics demonstration from the consumer electronics industry.
"According to 2019 to 2023 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data, 46,154 fatalities on US roads were due to crashes at night and in non-lit areas. 446 were due to glare impeding the driver’s vision."
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RE: https://scicomm.xyz/@JohnBarentine/117027711546764224
"Special care must also be taken in this newest space race to ensure that we do not end up overrunning Earth orbit and ruining one of Earth’s greatest natural resources for the gain of few."
#space #megaconstelkations #environment #alan #artificiallightatnight #satellite #lightpollution #astronomy #satellites #nightsky
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🪴💡 Researchers in #Germany tested how different types of artificial #light affect #nocturnal #insects at railway platforms.
They found that amber 1800K #LED lights, which lack blue light wavelengths, attracted far fewer insects than cool white LEDs or high-pressure sodium lamps. The #darksky reserve where the #study took place has already switched all its platform lights to the insect friendlier option.
👉 https://www.sciencealert.com/a-simple-lighting-swap-could-save-millions-of-insects
#lightpollution #biodiversity #conservation #science #nature #moths #ecology #wildlife #environment #biology
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🚨 Open position in the lab of Franz Hölker at @LeibnizIGB 🚨
GIS Scientist (m/f/x) – measuring and mapping nocturnal lightscapes
(fixed-term contract until 06/2029, DL for applications 2026/09/14)
#ecology 🦟
#jobs 👩💻
#science 🧪
#lightpollution 💡 -
This seems … problematic: commoditizing wasted outdoor light at night as a business opportunity. “These results demonstrate that an Ar + S atmosphere coupled with a carefully designed annealing profile provides a pathway toward high-voltage-output Sb2S3 thin-film solar cells, enabling BIPV systems to harvest low-intensity “waste” light, such as urban nighttime illumination, for hydrogen production via water splitting.”
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#SpaceDatacenters proposed by #Musk and #Bezos ‘catastrophic’ for planet, experts warn
New US petition demands review of plans from #TechCompanies amid fears of #EnvironmentalDestruction
Tom Perkins
Thu 23 Jul 2026Excerpt: "The number of active #satellites in orbit has grown exponentially from about 1,400 in 2015 to about 15,000 currently. As many as 100,000 are expected to be in orbit within the decade, not including the #datacenter networks. As of now, the bulk of the satellites’ pollution is thought to come from #Starlink and Amazon’s '#MegaConstellations' that provide broadband internet made up of about 10,000 satellites.
"Spacecraft can cause problems on their way up and down. Launches emit a range of emissions like #BlackCarbon, #NitrogenOxides, #CarbonMonoxide, #AluminumOxide, #ChlorineGases and, once in orbit, #mercury. When satellites are decommissioned five to 15 years later, they release metals as they vaporize. That’s injecting #pollutants into previously pristine parts of the #stratosphere, a highly sensitive system, and there’s very little understanding of the consequences."
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/23/space-datacenters-bezos-blue-originArchived version:
https://archive.ph/A9F07#ElonSucks #TechBros #BezosSucks #BigData #Datacenters #WorldPol #USPol #LEO #LowEarthOrbit #KesslerSyndrome #LightPollution
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#SaveMyLouisiana leads protest against Applied Digital data center
Story by Melinda Martinez, July 20, 2026
"Save My Louisiana organized a #protest against the #AppliedDigital #datacenter being built in the small Central Louisiana community of Boyce on Saturday, July 18.
"Those at the protest were concerned with non-disclosure agreements [#NDA's] signed by local officials, higher utility costs and the #EnvironmentalImpact of the Applied Digital data center. A few also questioned the true economic impact of the project, which they think will benefit the company, but not Central #Louisiana.
"Applied Digital, a Dallas-based digital infrastructure company, broke ground in January on #DeltaForge1, a large-scale artificial intelligence data center located at James Road and La. 121 near Boyce. A news release issued by the Louisiana Economic Development states it is expected to be finished by mid-2027.
"At a news conference held in May announcing the building of the $3.6 billion data center, Applied Digital board director Richard Nottenburg said that the Delta Forge 1 data center is not a traditional data center.
"Applied Digital has been working on transitioning from air cooled to liquid cooled data centers, said Applied Digital president and co-founder Jason Zhang at the same news conference.
“ 'Our design is a proprietary design that allows us to use very minimal water,' he said, adding that it’s an issue that is very important to communities where data centers are built." [So, in other words, an alleged "closed loop system"! But even closed loop systems have to be flushed periodically!!!]
#AIDatacenters #CorporateColonialism #ResistBigData #BigTech #BigData #USPol #DatacentersSuck #NoisePollution #LightPollution #ElectricityConsumption #Secrecy #AISucks
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Wait, what..? Something both the #Left and #Right can agree on?!! Maybe the right is waking up to #CorporateColonialism! Good! Our #CorporateOverlords take advantage of everyone!
#Datacenter opponents stage 142 #protests across 42 US states
Story by Valerie Volcovici and Lisa Baertlein, July 18, 2026
Excerpt: "Opponents of the rapid buildout of #datacenters held 142 protests across 42 states on Saturday in the first nationwide effort to channel anger at the #AI infrastructure expansion that has ramped up over the past year and roiled local politics.
"The protests were coordinated by #HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day #TeaParty. She compares growing opposition to data centers to the right-wing populist movement that emerged in 2009 to protest what it saw as excessive taxation and government overreach.
"Protesters rallied against what HumansFirst calls the 'unaccountable' buildout of #datacenters and 'unacceptable infringement on our liberty.'
"In #FredericksburgVA, one young man carried a sign reading, 'We thrive on water not data.' In #AtlantaGA, a small knot of protesters wielded signs reading, '#Georgia never voted for #hyperscale #AIDatacenters. ' "
Read more:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/data-center-opponents-stage-142-protests-across-42-us-states/ar-AA28cU6m#ResistBigData #BigTech #BigData #USPol #DatacentersSuck
#NoisePollution #LightPollution
#ElectricityConsumption #Secrecy #AISucks -
#VicksburgMS residents #protest planned #AmazonDatacenter
Acie Lewis
Sun, July 19, 2026Excerpt: " 'It's being put up right next to the main elementary school for the City of Vicksburg. And there are several #environmental and health concerns surrounding these #datacenters. And so, being right next to a school, that hits home to me because I really care about children. I have kids,' said Stuart English.
" 'We know nothing about it. No one said anything about it. So, we're just finding a location and putting it wherever we could fit, no matter how many children are there. These are our babies. We've got to take care of them, and I am,' said Claude Lee, a Vicksburg teacher."
Read more:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/vicksburg-residents-protest-planned-amazon-134114884.html#ResistBigData #BigTech #BigData #USPol #Datacenters #DatacentersSuck #NoisePollution #LightPollution #ElectricityConsumption #Secrecy #AISucks #AmazonDatacenters #AWS #Mississippi
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U.S. approval of giant ‘space mirror’ satellite alarms astronomers
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-approval-of-giant-space-mirror-satellite-alarms-astronomers/ via @SciAm
"The planet’s darkest skies could become about as bright as the heavens above a suburban town[...] For astronomers, it could make much of their observational work effectively impossible."
#astronomy #lightpollution #pollution #wildlife #biodiversity #health #reflectorbital
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We're Squandering LEDs' Potential to Save Our Night Skies
https://spectrum.ieee.org/led-light-pollution
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48978350
#HackerNews #LEDs #NightSky #LightPollution #EnvironmentalAwareness #Sustainability
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Observers Beware: Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirrors Approved for Launch
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observers-beware-reflect-orbitals-space-mirrors-approved-for-launch/ via Sky & Telescope
#astronomy #lightpollution #pollution #health #biodiversity #reflectorbital
