The Rural impact of Light Pollution

Many town-dwellers have a fond image of the countryside as a haven of peace and quiet, an unchanging place which suffers little from the urgencies of urban living. Unfortunately, the intrusion of urban into rural is greater than ever before - especially at night. Light pollution from towns and cities ensure their influence is felt far beyond where the roads and buildings end.

Town-based amateur astronomers often make night-time trips with portable telescopes and cameras far out into the countryside, and non-astronomers who love the sky for its own sake are forced to do likewise. Unless they are fortunate enough to live near a large expanse of practically uninhabited land, such as might be found in the Highlands of Scotland or mid-Wales, they are increasingly finding that their rural observing retreats are becoming urbanised to an uncomfortable degree, and country darkness is a thing of the past.

The well-known image of the United Kingdom from space by night shows that dark areas are knit round by strings of waste upward light. In England especially, where it is difficult to travel many miles from a town without approaching another one, true dark-sky areas are almost impossible to find. Large towns send up shrouds of spill light from poorly designed fixtures, and this is plainly visible from great distances. From the North Yorkshire Moors, the lights of Teesside invade the night sky. Even a small town can disfigure the sky to an altitude of 45 degrees from a distance of many miles, as in the author's own experience when photographing the stars in the Lake District, with Ulverston, far beyond the horizon, competing with the rising Moon to light up the sky. From a site in the middle of the New Forest, a golf driving range twenty miles away in Christchurch is visible both as a halo of waste light and as a row of bright floodlights.

A new factor has recently crept into the rural dark-light equation. The glow from distant towns is now rivalled by unregulated local private lighting. Cheap 500-watt "security" lamps, mostly imported from the Far East, are appearing on many houses. While their effectiveness in preventing crime remains a matter of debate, what is a fact is that they are more than three times brighter than Institution of Lighting Engineers (ILE) recommended levels, and there are usually no instructions in the packaging on the prevention of light nuisance.

The British Astronomical Association's Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS) has organised many appeals to the Department of the Environment (DETR) on the need for regulation of light waste and nuisance. The Campaign is NOT against lighting: it is against wasting light and the resulting ill effects upon the environment both above and below. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the Institution of Environmental Health Officers (IEHO) and other bodies have weighed in on our side.

To illustrate the march of problem lighting into the countryside, you need only set up a camera in any part of the British countryside, with the possible exception of mid-Wales and the Scottish Highlands, and take thirty-second exposures right around the horizon. The resulting panorama will show how towns, farms, roundabouts and other installations colour the night sky with waste upward light.

Security lights, commercial and sports floodlights, road lights, farm lights, golf ranges... all these can project unwanted and unnecessary light pollution into what might have been dark places. If "the right amount of light, and only where necessary" - a favourite phrase in CfDS literature - were used, and insisted on by law, much of our countryside might still be a place of dark night skies, and all those who feel the need for it could keep their patch of light - but to themselves. It is a sad fact that someone who is used to enjoying the beauty of the starry heavens can have it taken away overnight - without much hope of redress - by a thoughtlessly positioned lamp.

Although guidelines exist - for example, from the ILE and DETR - with specific mention of the problems faced by astronomers, the DETR is not yet minded to bring in proper regulation of lighting to safeguard Nature's grandest free spectacle. Michael Crichton, author of "Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda Strain", wrote in his series of autobiographical sketches "Travels" : "The natural world, our traditional source of direct insights, is rapidly disappearing. [The night sky,] this humbling reminder of Man's place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings once saw every twenty-four hours, is denied them. It's no wonder that people lose their bearings, lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about."

If you agree that poor lights offend, and should not rob the human race of the inspiring view of the vault of stars above, nor sully the environment below, you can take action. Ask your council's planners and engineers, your MP and your MEP what steps they are taking to counter all the problems caused by inefficient lighting, both in the sky and on the ground.