PRESERVING OUR STARLIT SKIES

The Institute is dedicated to preserving the star-filled skies over Maine's communities.

The first light pollution map of Mount Desert Island was created in April 2007 by College of the Atlantic students, Nicholas Bacon and Apoorv Gelhot from the Geographic Information Systems Laboratory, as part of the Island Astronomy Institute’s Starlit Communities Project.

The Institute has forged a unique partnership with Acadia National Park and Friends of Acadia to measure, promote, and protect  this endangered resource. In 2001 the National Park Service declared dark skies to be a "natural resource" worthy of monitoring and protection. In September 2006 the National Park Service's Night Sky Team used their robotic night-sky camera system to precisely map the amount of light pollution visible from the summit of Cadillac Mountain (below).

This pioneering full-sky measurement confirms what images from space were indicating: Maine possesses more pristine skies that any other state east of the Mississippi. The team declared the summit to be "an excellent East Coast site." Maine can be proud that dark skies are still part of "the way life should be."

For nearly the entire East Coast, night brings an orange glow. Yet east of Mount Desert Island, communities still enjoy a clear view of the Milky Way, which is hidden from 95% of the U.S. population. Across most of the eastern U.S., costly, glaring, and increasingly manageable, light pollution has reduced the universe to a handful of stars.
 

Images above by P. Cinzano, F. Falchi (University of Padova), C.D. Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder, CO). Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.

Light pollution is not only an esthetic issue. It is conservatively estimated that $1.5 billion of electricity is wasted annually on light that is directed skyward, rather than serving a necessary function such as illuminating our homes, highways, and workplaces, or providing security and crime deterrence.

The photo above, taken from Cadillac Mountain in October 1985, documents how few lights there used to be in Bar Harbor. The bright concentration of lights on the left of the frame comes from the Bluenose Ferry, the previous ferry to Yarmouth. The gap between the Bluenose and Bar Harbor’s center is now occupied by the brightly-lit campus of the College of the Atlantic. At the far right of the frame, toward the Jackson Laboratory, are pristine dark skies!

The Institute has partnered with the National Park Service, the Friends of Acadia, College of the Atlantic, and a team of volunteers on Mount Desert Island, to place Down East Maine on the leading edge of endeavors to use the newest light-mapping technology, disseminate measurements into the community, and use the data to ensure that our starlit skies are protected. We hope that our efforts, particularly in Acadia National Park, will serve as a model for the National Park Service's work in other parks. (In January 2007, the Friends of Acadia made a commitment to grant $15,000.00 in matching funds for this project; see their letter on our News page.)

The Institute is placing portable Sky Quality Meters in the hands of trained volunteers, teachers, and schoolchildren. We favor a grassroots rather than a "top-down" approach to dealing with the issue of light pollution. Our education programs, already designed to foster an appreciation of the starlit sky, will also help Maine's schoolchildren, who are our future leaders, understand the "why" and the "how" of preserving this valuable resource.

* Fran Howley’s fifth-graders at Pemetic School are measuring artificial light in the skies over Southwest Harbor. They share their findings in an interview with Bar Harbor Times reporter Laurie Schreiber ("Eyes on the Sky," January 14, 2008).

* Institute president Peter Lord attended the symposium The Night: Why Dark Hours Are So Important, in Washington, D.C. in February 2007. His report summarizes findings from specialists in cancer research, human physiology, security, energy, environmental research, and astronomy, as well as National Park staff. You may download his two-page report as a PDF.

* For more information on starlit-sky preservation in Acadia, you may download Peter Lord's article, "Of Curiosity and Starlight," from the Fall 2006 issue of Friends of Acadia Journal.

* Dr. Richard Stevens & Dr. David Blask have researched the connection between breast cancer and artificial lighting. Read about their findings in “Your Inner Clock,” from the January 7, 2007 issue of Washingtonian.

* Also see the cover story of the March 16, 2006 issue of Science News. This article, "Light All Night: New images quantify a nocturnal pollutant," discusses the light-mapping equipment described above. Science News cited this article as one of their most significant stories of 2006.

__________________
 

The cold, clear nights of a Downeast winter provide some of the best stargazing opportunities of the year. On December 31, 2007, the Institute's astrophotographer, James W. Cormier, captured two major galaxies, two major comets, and two major star clusters in one extraordinary shot. All of these objects were also visible with the unaided eye—a fact that emphasizes the treasures available to all of us in our region's night skies.

The photo shows:

* In the center of the frame: NGC-752, an open cluster in Andromeda
* Below NGC-753: the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33), in Triangulum
* Below M33: the periodic Comet Tuttle, in Pisces
* In center right: the Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
* In the upper left corner: the still-wonderful Comet Holmes, in Perseus
* Below and to the left of Comet Holmes: the open cluster M34, in Perseus

Technical specifications: Piggyback mounted Pentax 67 with 105mm f/2.4 lens stopped down to f/4, 25-minute exposure on Fujichrome 400X; scanned then processed in Photoshop Elements.

Click thumbnail to see the full-size image:

TOP