Dark Sacred Night--Bringing Back the Night Sky

A most excellent way to spend 16 minutes of your life is to watch Dark Sacred Night, a short documentary calling upon us to collectively bring back the beauty of the night sky. 

Created by area filmmaker Jared Flesher for the Princeton University Department of Sustainability, the film is a portrait of Princeton astrophysicist Gaspar Bakos and his advocacy to reduce the light pollution that denies us a glorious view of the universe. It will make you rethink the lighting outside your home and in your community, and make you wish you could see the Milky Way rather than light pollution when you gaze skyward at night.

I've witnessed Gaspar's advocacy in multiple ways. Earlier this year he helped us ready a friend's telescope for use at Herrontown Woods. He spoke in the library at the film's showing at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival. It was more recently, when he hosted a star party for a hundred-plus people on the lawn of the Institute for Advanced Study, that I began to think of him as an ambassador of the night sky. Using some sort of laser pointer, he directed people's attention to each of the various stars and planets bright enough to be seen. He drew from science and folklore to tell the stories of the night sky. 

By coincidence, Gaspar's work intersects with my family history. My father, also an astronomer, designed the twin Magellan Telescopes atop Las Campanas in northern Chile--the same mountain where Gaspar is currently building a telescope to scan the whole night sky for anything out of the ordinary. 

Though Dark Sacred Night calls on individuals, businesses, governments, and institutions to direct their lighting downward, it will take something more than isolated good deeds to bring back the night sky. As long as there is no consequence to drive change in behavior, the great majority of people will continue to needlessly spill light upwards, because we can. We become victims of our collective freedom to pollute. 

The loss of the night sky is one more instance in which unregulated and largely unintentional collective emission has imposed a tyranny upon us. My question after seeing the movie was, "How do we incentivize frugality?" I'm hardwired for frugality. My parents grew up in the Great Depression, and in some ways that inherited frugality has spurred my creativity, challenging me to do more with less. Astronomy imposes the discipline of frugality, given how faint are the light sources astronomers seek to understand. All the while, humanity wallows in abundance and excess. It is only through frugality--directing outside lighting downward rather than up--that we can regain the opulent beauty of the dark sacred night.