@skyglowberlin@fediscience.org
Post #4327912
2025-06-16 09:12 UTC
That question from the journalists had a major impact on my research career, and I’ve spent several years trying to understand the amount that different types of light sources radiate into the night environment.
That led to an EXTREMELY COOL research paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/1477153520958463
The city of Tucson, Arizona alternatively dimmed and brightened nearly their entire street light network (tens of thousands of lights!), in order to see how much light comes from the streetlights, and how much comes from other lights.
(3/)
Replies (2)
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@skyglowberlin@fediscience.org 2025-06-16 09:17
By changing the lights on different nights, it let us extrapolate to find out how bright the city would be if it turned off all the streetlights completely. The result was surprising: if all the streetlights were turned off completely, Tucson would barely change in the satellite image. After midnight, only about 13% of the light from Tucson that's seen from space comes from streetlights. (4/)
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@glasspusher@beige.party 2025-06-17 00:03
@skyglowberlin@fediscience.org attn @edwilk@mstdn.social