Seeing the Light

C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC) NOAA/NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

I first started noticing the orange glow from Santa Monica, just down the coast, a few years ago. It brightened steadily over a couple of years until it lit up the bedroom so much that I couldn't sleep. My solution was investing in a pair of eye shades, which I've been wearing nightly ever since. "There are more lights, and the lights we have are brighter," says Paul Bogard, who wrote The End of Night about this very issue. In fact, according to Scott Kardel, managing director of the International Dark Sky Association, "Light pollution's been growing at a rate faster than the population has been growing." He adds that "As lighting gets cheaper, people use more of it." But there is hope for those of us who would prefer to sleep sans eye shades and to actually see stars when we look up at night (video): http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/384755/the-night-sky/