Educational Bulletin #13-1

A publication of the Desert Protective Council protectdeserts.org

by Shaun Gonzales

Night Sky

A February starry night sky just west of Clark Mountain, with a Joshua Tree in the foreground. Photo by Shaun Gonzales

he night sky in the desert is a treasure to behold, and on a clear night it is possible for a city dweller to become lost in a twinkling sea of stars. Faint meteors and constellations seem to continuously emerge from light years away until it seems there is no more darkness left. A dazzling display of stars in the night sky is a resource visitors to the desert often expect and take for granted. Light pollution has invaded the night sky, much like urban sprawl engulfs our wildlands, although there are simple steps each of us can take to solve the problem of light pollution.

Measuring a Good Night Sky

A good night sky with minimal or no light pollution will display a bright Milky Way, meteorites that would otherwise not be visible if competing with city lights, dark nebulae in the Milky Way are easily visible with binoculars or telescopes, and the starry sky alone (no moon) will cast noticeable shadows on the ground, according to the International Dark Sky Association. In an excellent night sky, a galaxy known as M33, almost 3 million light years from Earth, is visible to the naked eye as a blurry cluster. In an excellent night sky, Jupiter and

This illustration demonstrates how the view of our night sky transitions from the inner city to rural locations and then remote wildlands.

Venus can shine so brightly that it is best not to stare at them to preserve your eyes adaptation to the dark. Once you are in the suburbs, these planets might be one of the few objects youll be able to see, the Milky Way is barely visible, if at all, and M33 is not visible. The quality of the night sky is constantly akin to having a full moon overhead. Once youre in the city, even the stars that form the more popular constellation patterns are faint, or not visible. Measuring the precise impact of light pollution and the visibility of the stars involves complex evaluations, but the end result is a standard known as the Bortle Dark-Sky scale, with excellent skies graded as a one, and inner-city skies graded as a nine. There is another formula used to estimate urban sky glow known as Walkers Law that uses population of the urban center and distance from the sky viewer. Roughly speaking, Walkers Law finds that a town of 3,600 people just 6 miles from the viewer will emit a sky glow impacting visibility of stars up to 45 degrees from the horizon. A city of 5.6 million people will distort that same

horizon from over 120 miles away. Places that have excellent night sky are, not surprisingly, far enough from concentrations of human light sources that drown out our stars. The night sky in the desert offers remoteness and often cloud-free skies that avail the cosmos to visitors. Despite appearing as vast and open as outer space, our deserts however, have not escaped the impacts of light pollution, and domes of light pollution that are visible on the horizon even from the remote corners of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. Although the sprawling metropolises of Las Vegas and Los Angeles are major culprits when it comes to defacing the night sky, even smaller towns like Barstow and Joshua Tree emit enough light pollution to have their own noticeable impact on the night sky. From Keys View in Joshua Tree National Park, a fairly severe light pollution dome will obscure the night sky on the horizon. The light pollution is from Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Indio and the Coachella Valley, but even the small town of Joshua Tree with a

population of about 7,000 people casts a glow that reaches almost 20 degrees on the horizon, according to the Morongo Basin Dark Sky Alliance. Even in the Pinto Basin, which is further east, the small town of Joshua Tree and the Twentynine Palms Marine base produce a glow that obscures the night sky stretching 20 degrees into the sky from the horizon. Poor lighting wastes energy to the tune of $2.2 billion per year in the U.S. alone. International Dark Sky Association www.darksky.org

Treasuring the Night Sky

The night skys most significant and unquantifiable value to the average person who can look up and marvel at the starsis a humbling experience that inundates a viewer with the immensity of the universe. Most citydwellers do not get to experience this unless they venture into the desert. Todd Gonzales, an outreach supervisor at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, highlighted the

surprise some Los Angelenos expressed after looking up at the night sky following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which led to massive power outages. As a result of reduced light pollution, some residents called local authorities to report a strange silver glow in the night sky that they did not recognize the Milky Way. From an economic standpoint, night sky resources not only sustain travel plans by those who appreciate a beautiful night sky, but they can also sustain astronomers. Arizona is home to some of the stricter light pollution control standards an effort to keep astronomers from leaving the state. From Lowell Observatorys perch above Flagstaff, high power telescopes can study far away stars and galaxies thanks to Flagstaffs city code that keeps light pollution to a minimum. The Observatory built the new Discovery Channel telescope south of Flagstaff, and from there the light dome of Phoenix is visible on the horizon. In an effort to keep millions of dollars of investment in astronomy research and telescope construction from fleeing the state, the Governor of Arizona in 2012 vetoed a bill that would have permitted bright electronic billboards in the state. To wildlife, the night sky has a much more significant value. Some animals use the moons polarized light for navigation, but the addition of light pollution confuses

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK NIGHT SKY / LIGHT POLLUTION KEYS VIEW

80 60 40 20 0 180 210 240 270 300 330 0 30 60 80 120 150 180

LOS ANGELES COACHELLA VALLEY INDIO LA QUINTA PALM SPRINGS YUCCA VALLEY

JOSHUA TREE

29 PALMS EL CENTRAL IMPERIAL

TWENTYNINE PALMS MARINE BASE LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

CATHEDRAL CITY

COACHELLA VALLEY

PALM DESERT RANCHO MIRAGE

DATA COLLECTED 09/25/2008 DATA SET COLLECTED BY: Luke Sabala Physical Scientist Don Duracua Physical Scientist Image by Luke Sabala Physical Scientist

wildlife that are accustomed to using the moon to navigate. Lit buildings in the city, for example, often confuse migrating birds, and lead to deadly collisions. Thousands of birds migrate each year through our southwestern deserts to and from Latin America. Frogs, toads, and salamanders are especially sensitive to artificial light, and in the desert riparian areas they would have little or no options for relocation. Insect swarms attracted to artificial light can also lead to ecological imbalances in the relationship between predator and prey. Bird and bats that are not repelled by artificial light begin to gravitate toward these insect swarms, while predators that avoid artificial light such as some species of bats suddenly lose access to much of their food source.
Morongo Basin Dark Skies Alliance; educating the public about what we can each do to help keep our night skies.

Photo courtesy of Morongo Basin Dark Skies Alliance.

Fixing the Night Sky

Reducing light pollution primarily depends on careful lighting design and selection, using shielding that focuses lights downward and limiting brightness when possible. Streetlights, without cutoffs or appropriate shielding, emit what is known as fugitive light light that does not contribute to lighting the street. The same can be the case for an outdoor security light at your house, or lights on billboards and parking lots. All of this adds to light pollution, but a fix can be simple and add to your energy efficiency. Light pollution is a symbol of waste. Excess light sent far into the atmosphere does not serve the lights intended purpose, whether it is to keep a parking lot, front porch, or a billboard lit. It is estimated that the United States alone projects nearly 4.5 billion dollars worth of light into the atmosphere, each year. As we tackle fossil fuel use and climate change, this lack of efficiency is startling, and addressing light pollution has the positive side-effect of reducing our dependence on centralized power plants that often destroy the same wildlands we cherish. So what can we do? For your porch light or outdoor security light, you can replace unnecessarily bright bulbs with

a lower wattage LED bulb that is shielded youll be able to light up your entryway without competing with a galaxy millions of miles away. The Morongo Basin Dark Sky Alliance has begun a bulb exchange, and plans to replace 50 lights in the Joshua Tree area before the end of the year. According to Victoria Fuller, the Alliance is replacing less efficient lights with nine-watt LED bulbs, and educating the community about proper shielding. Victoria noted that the Alliances efforts have also served as an excellent opportunity to form alliances, working with the nearby Marine Corps base and the National Parks Conservation Association. The Alliance is hoping to change San Bernardino Countys ordinances for the desert area to limit light pollution. Without these measures we are missing out on a beautiful scene that can be available to us every night. A starry sky that wildlife depends upon; natures own high definition television, with three dimensional programming running from sunset to sunrise for the weary desert traveler.

Shaun Gonzales describes himself as a desert activist who grew up in Victorville, CA. The Desert Protective Council is grateful for Shauns voice and his sharing of desert knowledge.