By Alison Appelbe
Contributing writer

"Look around your city or town. See how many street lamps allow plenty of light to shine upwards. Count how many stars you can see. If you are old enough to remember how the sky looked 30 years ago, could you see the Milky Way then? Can you now?"

—Dr. Malcolm Smith, director of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile, in a speech to the International Astronomical Union.

When Angela Squires was growing up in post-war suburban London, she could step into the garden of her family’s Essex bungalow at night and look up at literally thousands of stars. "It was difficult being a teenager, and the stars became a spiritual and emotional connection for me," she recalls. "The stars had constancy. We couldn’t mess them up. We couldn’t touch them."

With a well-thumbed copy of former Royal Astronomer Patrick’s Moore’s small hardcover book, The Observer’s Book of Astronomy: The Sky at Night in hand, Squires went on to become a highly knowledgeable amateur astronomer.

Today she handles public relations for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s 300-member Vancouver Centre chapter. She’s also one of a handful of British Columbians taking an active role in the burgeoning international effort by mainly amateur astronomers to raise public awareness of light pollution.

Late last year, Squires gave a talk in Seattle to the Northwest chapter of the Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), which has 45,000 members worldwide. Her computer is filled with files, speeches, articles, press releases and court records on light-related issues and actions, not least of which is the Township of Langley’s ongoing struggle to get Famous Players to reduce the nightly use of as many as four sweeping searchlights at its 18-screen movie complex.

Light pollution is a huge subject: issues range from the obliteration of the glorious night sky to the devastating effects of over-lighting on migrating birds and nesting animals.

But for Squires and other activists, the problem comes down mainly to the need to reduce massive amounts of misdirected and wasted light, and to introduce quality lighting that improves every aspect of the environment.

"We’re not saying we don’t need light, but let’s have it shine where we need it, and when we don’t need it, turn it off," Squires says.

Who will deny that the night sky, bisected by the Milky Way, is one of the greatest gifts to humanity? And yet over the past century we have almost erased it from view in all but the countryside. Today, only a few hundred stars—rather than the roughly 4,000 the naked eye is capable of seeing—are visible on a clear night in Vancouver.

It’s absurd when you think about it. It takes billions of years for particles of light to reach us and then, in the last thousandth of a second, before the light can reach a telescope, we obliterate it with unnecessary and even harmful over-lighting of our urban environment.

The worldwide astronomical community is understandably concerned. Not only must astronomers now seek ever more remote locations where telescopes can operate, they’re forced to develop larger and more expensive technology to cut through the light pollution or "sky glow," not to mention other forms of atmospheric debris.

Canada is working with U.S. space scientists on a multi-billion-dollar inter-stellar telescope that will be positioned well outside the earth’s atmosphere, and feature a giant shield to protect it from the sun’s powerful rays. But where does that leave earth-bound professional and amateur astronomers—not to mention the average person, most of whom are denied a view of a reality that has, over the centuries, shaped much of our philosophy, religion, science, art and enjoyment of life?

An e-mail request for information to IDA headquarters in Tucson, Arizona—a long-time U.S. centre of astronomical research and the logical headquarters for the dark-sky movement—brings a flurry of replies from around the continent.

"Our 14-year-old daughter saw the Milky Way for the first time in her life last August when we drove for two hours to take her to an astronomy-club star park," writes Cliff Haas, chairman of the light pollution committee of the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford in Connecticut. "She couldn’t stop talking about it. We were blessed with one clear night when the Milky Way cut the night sky from horizon to horizon—not something we ever get to see at home in our town of 17,000."

From Abbotsford, Paul Greenhaugh writes of his successful effort as a member of the Fraser Valley Astronomers Society to transform a small park on Sumas Mountain, east of Abbotsford, into a dark-sky preserve, one of the first of its kind in Canada.

Greenhaugh concedes that McDonald Park can’t compare with the 5,000-acre Torrance Barrens dark-sky preserve north of Toronto, but adds: "It’s a victory nonetheless. Praise has poured in from communities around the globe—a statement, if you will, that light pollution is becoming a problem for astronomers everywhere."

Support for dark-sky parks and preserves is growing, particularly in the U.S. But it’s usually where excessive lighting interferes with the work of important observatories.

The municipality of Saanich, near Victoria, has passed a bylaw requiring major developers or builders to discuss their lighting plans with astronomers at the National Research Council’s Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich. The only federal observatory in Canada still dedicated to "optical" observation of the stars—as opposed to computer-driven star-watching—the 83-year-old Victoria observatory is by no means cutting edge, concedes staff astronomer David Bohlender. Nevertheless, amateur and university astronomers seek out and book time on its 1.8-metre and 1.2-metre telescopes.

One researcher searches for asteroids that may come crashing down on earth. However, as the urban sky gets brighter, Bohlender says, locating these hazardous objects in the earth’s atmosphere becomes increasingly difficult.

Given the federal observatory’s regional importance, most local municipal councils, including Victoria, have listened to astronomers and considered the issue of light pollution. "There’s a lot of interest here," says Bohlender, "but if Victoria had a major optical telescope there would probably be more."

Vancouver, with only the small if invaluable .5-metre telescope at the Gordon MacMillan Southam Observatory in Vanier Park, has a long way to go when it comes to awareness.

For Squires and other dark-sky activists, the most pressing matter is convincing engineers and bureaucrats to switch to an overhead street lamp that prevents light from shining futilely out to the side and up into the night sky.

With the "fully shielded" or "full-cut-off" light fixtures they advocate, the bulb, lens or lamp is fully recessed into the fixture, directing the light downward.

Most lamp standards in Vancouver feature "sag-lens" lamps—often on curved or cobra-headed poles or standards—that disperse light in various directions. Metro Toronto, on the other hand, is replacing all sag-lens lamps with full-cut-off (FCO) fixtures, and the new provincial highway on Vancouver Island is entirely lit with FCO lamps.

FCO lamps are also appearing in small pockets around this city, including some lanes where local residents have agreed to pay for improvements. The newly widened Stanley Park Causeway is outfitted with heritage-style light standards with fully enclosed lenses in lamps that direct light down, not sideways into the trees.

But while Vancouver has relatively few FCO lamps, the city is looking at trends and options. Lighting engineer Tom Hammel reports that "high-cut-off" fixtures attached to lamp standards from which the cobra-heads have been removed are now in place on Granville Street Bridge, portions of the Kitsilano Beach parking lot, and on Knight Street between 39th and 43rd avenues. The latter installation allows drivers to compare the quality of lighting from "cut-off" lighting with that of a conventional sag lens, Hammel points out.

FCO lamps reduce glare, and the less glare the greater the visibility, says Hammel. However, the city installed sag-lens high-pressure sodium lights that conserve power throughout the city less than a decade ago, and it’s unlikely to purchase an entirely new system in the near future, says senior engineer Ian Adam.

The only light-related complaints Adam hears are from residents who don’t like street lights shining into their windows—what lighting critics describe as "light trespass."

Light trespass can also be caused by a neighbour’s porch light that shines into your bedroom or a spotlight that illuminates your garden as well as theirs. It can be as over-arching as the searchlights and parking-lot lights that illuminate the Famous Player’s Colossus complex in Langley.

After Famous Players opened the glittering Colossus in May 1999, several residents—armed with a 700-name petition and the support of the RASC Vancouver Centre—took the matter to the township council, which passed a "Searchlights Bylaw" limiting Famous Players’ operation of the lights to 30 days a year.

Famous Players agreed to cut back to 208 days but declared the bylaw invalid and unenforceable, and filed an action against the township in B.C. Supreme Court, hoping, it appeared, that the municipality would back off. No such luck.

Langley council, which believes the bylaw will stand up in court, recently instructed its staff to set a hearing date and get on with it. However, township corporate manager Alberto De Feo said last week that no court date has been set. Lawyers for the Township are still talking to Famous Players in hopes of coming to an agreement to limit searchlight use.

Mayor Kurt Alberts said searchlights are for special occasions and limiting their use is not a hardship. "We felt that the bylaw struck a balance between the business needs [of Famous Players] and the desire of residents to have a reasonable lifestyle."

David Dodge, of Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, describes Famous Player’s lighting as "tantamount to celestial vandalism." Says Squires: "At its heart, the battle in Langley is about ownership of the night sky. Does it belong to large corporations to be commercially exploited at will? Or does the majestic, star-studded sky belong to the ordinary people who live under it?"

Most of us have been led to believe that more light means less crime. Not so, say some experts. UBC astronomer Jaymie Matthews says glare from poorly designed lights creates pools of light where you can see, while leaving shadows where trouble may lurk.

Nor does intensive lighting deter break-ins, claim Dark-Sky advocates. Greenhaugh reports that when the San Antonio, Texas school district turned off its indoor and outdoor lights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., the annual cost of vandalism fell from $160,000 U.S. to $41,000. School officials discovered vandals with flashlights are more easily pinpointed than those who depend on overhead lighting to show them the way.

Some specialists say glare, which Squires compares to the effect of light bulbs without shades, makes it harder to see. Moving through space that isn’t uniformly lit forces the eye to constantly adapt and re-adapt, says Texas optometrist Dr. Louis Binder. Continuous readjustment causes fatigue and stress, he adds.

And this isn’t the only health issue that better lighting advocates are raising. Dr. Steve Pauley told the International Astronomical Union that the day/night and light/dark cycle—our circadian rhythm—is seriously threatened by round-the-clock lighting. Night is essential to our health, he says. For example, a lack of darkness reduces our glandular production of melatonin, which in turn helps suppress most cancers.

Birds and animals are another worry. The Toronto-based Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) collected the carcasses of 3,000 migrating birds that crashed into lighted windows in Toronto’s financial district at night. Since FLAP raised the alarm, more Toronto buildings are turning off unnecessary lights at night, reducing the kill and saving thousands of dollars in energy costs. First Canadian Place, the tallest building in Toronto, has cut its electric bill by more than $1 million, FLAP reports.

Portions of the Florida coast now require full-cut-off lamps to prevent young sea-turtles from mistaking street lights for moonlight and wandering up to the roads and getting killed. Similarly, excessive lighting is seen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a factor in the decline of the protected egret waterfowl.

Finally, there’s the profligate waste of precious energy: to wit the increasing brownouts in California, and concern that Seattle Light and Power faces similar cutbacks. Environmentalists report unnecessary outdoor lighting costs the U.S. $2 billion annually. "It’s wasted light," says Squires. "We have no reason to light up the underbelly of seagulls and airplanes. There’s no point."

Says IDA president David Crawford: "As we remove the night and turn it into day, it’s a psychological stress on our system. The future will show that as we bring back the night, there’s a calming influence on people."

It’s an argument that appeals to Squires. "The night sky was a comfort to me," she says. "I had all this turmoil in my life. Looking up was calming experience."