The Night Sky is a Precious Gift
Have you ever thought about how wonderful it is that you can see the stars in the night sky? It’s easy for us to take this miracle for granted, but visitors from cities and suburbs notice it right away. The night sky is a precious gift.
For ancient man, the night sky was fascinating entertainment; a companion, the equivalent of today’s wide screen TV. The ever-changing constellations and phases of the moon marked the passing of time, and provided a dependable way to navigate. In today’s 24-hour world, many people have lost touch with the infinite wonder of the night sky, but we in rural southwest Ohio can still enjoy it.
Like so many things in the natural world, darkness at night is a non-renewable resource like clean air, clean water, peace and quiet. Little by little, we can lose these precious things without even realizing it. Once they’re lost it’s very hard, almost impossible, to get them back.
For all of earth’s history, life has relied on a predictable rhythm of day and night. It’s encoded in the DNA of all plants and animals. Plants and animals depend on Earth’s daily cycle of light and dark rhythm to guide life-sustaining behaviors such as reproduction, nourishment, sleep and protection from predators.
Humans have radically disrupted this cycle with 24 hour lighting. Night lighting is a mixed blessing. Scientific evidence suggests that artificial light at night has negative, and sometimes deadly, effects on many creatures including amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and plants. According to research scientist Christopher Kyba, for nocturnal animals, “the introduction of artificial light probably represents the most drastic change human beings have made to their environment. Near cities, cloudy skies are now hundreds, or even thousands of times brighter than they were 200 years ago. We are only beginning to learn what a drastic effect this has had on nocturnal ecology.”
Humans have also evolved to the rhythms of the natural light-dark cycle of day and night. Like most life on Earth, humans live by a circadian rhythm (our biological clock), a sleep-wake pattern governed by the day-night cycle. Artificial light at night can disrupt that cycle. The spread of artificial lighting means most of us no longer experience truly dark nights.
Unfortunately our own night skies are dramatically brighter than they were just a few short years ago. Billboard lighting and 24-hour lighting by residents and businesses threatens to blot out our view of the heavens. Most people never think about light scatter or the negative impacts of artificial light at night. We need to better appreciate what a priceless, non-renewable resource it is, to see the stars in the night sky.
Steve Boehme is a landscape designer/installer specializing in landscape “makeovers”. “Let’s Grow” is published weekly; column archives are on the “Garden Advice” page at www.goodseedfarm.com. For more information is available at www.goodseedfarm.com or call GoodSeed Farm Landscapes at (937) 587-7021.