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Starry Starry Night~National Dark Sky Week
Petoskey News-Review 4.07

April 2007- This week of April’s first new moon marks the observance of National Dark Sky Week, April 17 through 23, 2007. The observance was inaugurated in 2003 by high school sophomore and amateur astronomer Jennifer Barlow from her home in Virginia. Celebrated each year since during the April new moon, National Dark Sky Week is an attempt to establish an officially and widely recognized time on the calendar for turning off all extraneous lights in order to truly experience the majesty of the night sky, and for recognizing the desirability and feasibility of protecting it.

Here in northwestern Lower Michigan we have the advantage of being bounded by a vast body of water upon which lighted development cannot occur. This may seem elementary, but when you consider how much one misplaced light can crowd innumerable stars and night sky phenomena from view, then the desire to protect this vast resource becomes all the more precious. Challenge yourself to get outside and look around. How many lights can you turn off so that you and your neighbors can enjoy the stars? And how can you encourage our local businesses and schools to observe National Dark Sky Week?

Consider, light pollution is not the only thing threatening our ability to see the night sky. This threat also stems from our losing the stories, and their subsequent influence on our cultural life. Take for instance the stories of Ursa Minor, widely known as the Little Dipper. Most of us are aware that Ursa Minor is the Little Bear, and that the star at the tail end of the Little Bear is Polaris, the North Star. What most people don’t know is that even though Polaris marks the way due north, it is not the brightest object in the northern skies. In fact, Polaris is tricky to find even in dark skies, despite the help of the pointer stars on the outside lip of the cup of the Big Dipper which lead directly to it.

Perhaps it is only coincidence that simultaneous to the growth and development and subsequent increase in light pollution we have witnessed a decrease in knowledge about star names, their positions and their lore. But it is no coincidence the effect of light pollution from urban areas deep into some of America’s most remote, wild places, such as the National Parks, and, well, our own local communities.

Light pollution also has wide and devastating ecological consequences, affecting everything from the nocturnal migration of birds to the disorientation of turtle hatchlings on nesting beaches. Certain types of electrical lights are said to contribute to global warming, and ecologists report that 44% of Americans live in places where it does not become sufficiently dark for the human eye to complete the transition from cone to rod vision. Nearly 19% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface experiences night sky brightness that is polluted by astronomical standards. How could the Egyptians have built their mighty pyramids and oriented them to a star under such conditions? The star Thuban in the constellation Draco was their Pole Star, and from the central passage of the Great Cheops Pyramid this star could be seen, both day and night.

There is a tale formerly associated with the stars of Ursa Minor, that there in the north this constellation marked the mountain which was the seat of the gods, and that Polaris marked the star at the top of said mountain. The seven stars of Ursa Minor were also once related to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, early Christians who, under persecution by Decius in our 3rd century, slept for nearly 200 years in the grotto under the earthly mountain that served as counterpart to this heavenly mountain. The story predates Rip Van Winkle by many hundreds of years, and tells of how these seven young men hid themselves in the mountain, and there fell asleep, never aware that Decius had a stone sealed over the entrance to their cave. Nearly 200 years later, the stone had crumbled and Christianity had spread far and wide, and the seven sleepers awoke. They were found out because they sought to buy bread with gold coins no longer in circulation, and they were eventually canonized and celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church until 1969.

National Dark Sky Week, observed in this season when both the Big and Little Dippers move toward the zenith of the night sky, is endorsed by the International Dark Sky Association, the American Astronomical Society (professional astronomers), the Astronomical League (a large confederation of U.S. amateur astronomy clubs) and Sky & Telescope. Locally, National Dark Sky Week is celebrated by the Outdoor Lighting Forum with its annual awards luncheon during which they honor community members, professionals, academics, and individuals for outstanding efforts to curb light pollution. The OLF has many brochures and ideas about alternate lighting methods for businesses and developers, and can be reached at 231.348.1731.

With all due respect to the inventive mind of Thomas Edison, let it not take 200 years for us to wake up to the opportunity to make a difference in the night, even by turning out one simple light.

~ Mary Stewart Adams