YOU ARE A STARGAZER...
YES, YOU ARE A STARGAZER. We are all stargazers. Your ancestors were stargazers, too. The stars you see tonight are the same stars your ancestors saw thousands of years ago. Imagine your great, great, great, great, great grandparents gazing silently into the dark sky realm, awed by the starry spectacle aloft.
Imagine how dark their sky must have been. No streetlights, no business lights, no lights at all to intrude upon their magnificent view of the cosmos.
Stargazing is unique among human activities. It bonds you, it links you, unites you, fuses you to all the people who have ever lived on this planet.
Every time you gaze into the heavens you reaffirm your cosmic connection. You are the stuff of stars. The atoms that shape you were once the dust and gas of ancient stars. The stars are your ancestors.
You have a lifetime to observe the sky, so why not start your cosmic cruise tonight? Stand at the bow of your own imaginary starship, stretch your curiosity, and let the waves of starlight wash over you. Each observation you make of the starry sky becomes a discovery as you sail the cosmic sea.
Observe objects of interest regularly, repeatedly, frequently during the year. You'll soon behold the rhythm of the sky. You'll discover its cadence, its tempo, its pulse, its patterns. You'll marvel at the Moon as she cycles from phase to phase during her monthly dance with Earth. You'll ponder planetary gyrations along the zodiac.
With patience, you’ll soon track and trace the trails of stars arching across the sky. Each season a new cast of cosmic characters and creatures will delight you as they perform upon your celestial stage. Once known, the constellations and stars will greet and gratify you all the years of your life.
Stargazing is a free, fun, family activity. It strengthens and nurtures family bonds. Invite family members outside under the sky dome. Create your own family constellations, mythology, history, legends, lore, and fables.
Form an observing group with friends / relatives / classmates to share skills and stories. The universe beckons, it calls to you. Listen, heed its lullaby, go outside, explore!
Sky watchers have inherited a rich heritage of skylore collected by hundreds of generations of famous and nameless sky watchers. You can continue that heritage by starting your own cosmic keepsake.
Start an observing diary...
...and imagine your child or grandchild discovering your star diary some clear night in the 21st or 22d Century, taking it outside, and observing the same objects you saw 25, 50, or 100 years earlier. Keep it and pass it on to them; they will cherish it, and use it to help themselves to night sky wonders.
The modest astronomical seeds you sow tonight may blossom and dazzle your descendants.
Nature intended the night sky to be dark. It is not. This is unacceptable! Our distant ancestors saw the sky in absolute, consummate darkness; but our night sky is littered with light.
We are on the brink of a celestial catastrophe!
Sound serious?
It is. Listen. We need a dark sky revolution! NOW!
We are the first life forms on Earth capable of celestial extinction. We have the means and the will, it seems, to vanquish the night. We possess the ultimate antidarkness weapon. We call it LIGHT--bazillowatts of blazing, glaring, wanton, reckless, upturned light! And worse, we seem obsessed with using it to destroy starlight!
What value the night? What worth the sky? What merit the stars? Why save these twinkling beacons from heaven's portal? Have we not disturbed every ecosystem on this planet in search of money? We slash and burn rainforests, contaminate water, desecrate air, and foul land.
Is not the sky a worthy sanctuary, refuge, preserve? Must we annihilate the night sky to satisfy our lust for light? Have we no conscience, no restraint? Are we so obsessed with our power, our dominion over Nature, that we must conquer the cosmos?
Tonight, to satisfy our lust for light, large cities will spray fountains of light skyward, and only a few of Nature's brightest luminaries will defy the awful glow. A halo of wasteful light will hover over every small town. Even the sky over farm and field will be tainted by a sea of shimmering security lights. We are trapped in a web of wires and poles, marquees and signs, streetlights, blazing business lights, and billboards beaming wasteful light skyward.
Most people have never seen a truly dark sky. Indeed, so few people know the night sky's starry patterns that many mistake Venus and even the Moon to be the agents of alien abduction, destruction, and extinction!
To behold the starry spectacle of a genuinely dark sky, stargazers are forced to travel ever greater distances to the frontier, the outback, the hinterlands of human colonization, and even there the ghostly specter of our castaway light hovers on the horizon, stalks the stars, and devours the darkness!
What can I do to launch change?
1. KNOW THE SKY!
Learn the stars, constellations, lunar phases, planet positions. As you read this: Where is the Moon and what is its phase? Where is the Sun (no fair peeking)? If it's nighttime as you read this, where's the Sun? Can you point to Jupiter? Saturn? Mars? Mercury? Where is the Big Dipper? Orion? Scorpius? Arcturus? Vega? Where is M-31? M-57? Once you are familiar with the sky's lights, you will understand why stargazers savor darkness!2. LOOK AT LIGHTS!
Look at streetlights, business lights, building lights, all lights, during the day and especially at night. Proper lighting shines down, not out in your eyes or up into the sky.We all need night light for safety and security, but we have become light addicts; yes, we are addicted to using much more light than we need.
Most current lighting fixtures shine up and out, not down. Upturned light is wasteful light, and wasteful light is wasted electricity, wasted energy, wasted fuel, wasted resources, wasted MONEY--your money! That's right! You pay for every beam of light that shines up into space not down on the ground where it is needed.
When you buy any product, the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer all add the cost of their wasteful light to the product's price. You pay for the electricity that the manufacturer uses to shed bazillowatts of wasteful light on his / her buildings, warehouses, distribution centers, etc.
Lighting engineers, architects, and designers are slowly becoming enLIGHTened. Proper lighting designs are available and often less expensive than the older light bombs that spray light up, down, out, around, left, right, and everywhere, not just where it's needed.
3. ASK QUESTIONS, SEEK ANSWERS!
Educate yourself about light, light fixtures, lighting designs, lighting laws, and lighting policies. If you don't do it, who will?4. DEMAND DARKNESS!
Gently, tactfully, persuasively, persistently, eloquently, aggressively, convincingly, tenaciously, relentlessly demand a dark sky. If you don't demand a dark sky, a DARK SKY REVOLUTION, starlight will vanish! We can, we will restore a starry, dark night sky over America!Carpe Noctem (Seize the Night)!
troegerj@raccoon.com