Who Turned out the Light?

Reflecting on light pollution in Columbia. 

 

Four miniscule pinpricks of white – Europa, Ganymede, Io, and Callisto – section the rust-colored globe in half, like the tear-away fold on a piece of paper. At the bottom of the striped orange ball, in the middle, a deep red spot can just be made out. Even at this distance, the dime-sized Jupiter seems awe-inspiringly large.

Randy Durk flips a switch, and the domed ceiling of Laws Observatory begins to swivel with a deep electric hum. Through the eyepiece of the 16-inch Celestron telescope, the famous ringed silhouette of Saturn sidles into view.

“People always like to see Saturn,” says Val Germann, Durk’s fellow Central Missouri Amateur Astronomer. The 66-year-old Germann climbs the step ladder up to the scope’s eyepiece to see the familiar gas giant. Germann has been a CMAA member since 1978; Durk since 1997. Every Wednesday night, from 8 to 10 p.m., the two can be found on the MU Astronomy and Physics Building’s fifth floor, either in the astronomy museum, lined with signed photos of NASA mission controllers and Star Trek actors, or up in the dark observatory, where they go for a better view of the sky.

Recently, increased development has made it harder for Columbia stargazers to catch a glimpse of space. The growth of downtown businesses and housing over the past decade has had the deleterious effect of polluting the sky with light. This light pollution, or sky glow, is the excess product of every streetlight, parking lot fixture, and apartment floodlight in town, and it has diminished the sea of stars that Germann used to know.

“I started coming [to Laws] in the ’70s, and as far as the seeing goes, oh my God, it’s much worse, like really bad,” Germann says. “Then when they built Stankowski Field [a floodlit recreation field at MU] over there, that was sort of the linchpin.”

Aspiring astronomers have to drive to the outskirts of Columbia for a better view of the heavens, and Midwesterners have to go as far away as the Oklahoma panhandle for complete clarity. A recent study published in Science Advances found that 99 percent of Americans and Europeans live under light-polluted skies, and more than 80 percent of North Americans couldn’t see the Milky Way. Germann says utilizing shielded light fixtures, which block beams from shining skyward, or installing more efficient bulbs like LEDs would make a dent in the amount of light pollution in town. But retroactively outfitting older properties with new lighting would be costly and difficult to organize.

 

Section 29-30.1 of the Columbia municipal code outlines outdoor lighting regulations for any new developments in town, with part of the stated purpose being “To control the obtrusive aspects of excessive and careless outdoor lighting usage.” The ordinance, which was adopted by city council in 2006 at the recommendation of the Columbia Environment and Energy Commission, aimed in part to minimize the effects of sky glow and encourage energy conservation through efficient lighting usage.

The ordinance explicitly defines the type of cutoff level — the amount of allowable light blocked from shining above a fixture — for all lighting on new construction projects installed after Dec. 4, 2006. The ordinance requires full-cutoff, downward-facing lights on all new buildings, with bulbs not exceeding 400 watts. Athletic fields, parking lots, gas stations, and outdoor display areas are also covered in the ordinance to varying degrees, though less strictly than private properties.

While half of the main purpose of the ordinance was to reduce excessive light, the other half was focused on ensuring adequate amounts of light are shed, for safety reasons. Because of this, parking lots, city streets, and commercial developments have to find a balance between too much light and too little.

Shane Creech, the building and site development manager for the city, says his department is the enforcement mechanism for the lighting ordinance. His division carries out development plan reviews and site inspections to ensure new and existing projects are up to code.

“The majesty of the sky just isn’t there anymore,” Germann says. “We can show the moon, Mars, some star clusters, but no galaxies, no Milky Way . . . Even if we get it back to where it was ten years ago, it would be considered a victory.”

 

“When it comes to commercial structures, they submit a lighting plan that shows the placement of the lights,” Creech says. “There are parameters where it needs to have so much light in order to safely light an area and also to ensure it doesn’t have too much to spill out of that area. So we’re looking for a minimum and a maximum.”

Creech says builders have to identify what types of lights will be used in their project, as well as where they will be installed. If a project is found to be in noncompliance by Creech’s team, the builder can be written up with a notice of violation, or even referred to the city prosecutor.

The effects of light pollution could reach outside the realm of neighborly quarrels and angry astronomers. Some research and environmental advocacy groups have claimed artificial night lighting causes harmful effects on the natural environment. A 2004 study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment defines astronomical and ecological sky glow as two separate, negative forms of pollution: astronomical, referring to obscuring the night sky, and ecological, responsible for altering natural habitats. The report cites different “catastrophic consequences” ecological light pollution has had on wild species like birds, sea turtles, and other animals that have evolved to use the night sky as a form of navigation while migrating.

Barbara Buffaloe, sustainability manager for Columbia, says the city is working to limit light pollution in the natural environment, even though those effects have never been directly studied locally.

“As I understand it, we enacted that ordinance partly so we would not be affecting nocturnal animals and the species that take cues from the night sky lights,” Buffaloe says. “We want to make sure that we don’t have people and animal species staying up any later than they should.”

Buffaloe says the city is also working to increase the efficiency of its lighting infrastructure by replacing old streetlight bulbs with LEDs, which are much more energy efficient and have a more controllable output.

 

Back in the dark dome of Laws Observatory, Germann and  Durk reflect on old stargazing spots they used to visit years before. Germann used to spend all night at Rock Bridge State Park with his friends just looking at the stars, though he says now you need special permission from the park to be there after dark. Durk says he hasn’t been practicing his astrophotography in years, due to all of his favorite spots now having giant, blinking cell towers marring the view.

Multiple families and their small children have circled through the exhibit this night. Even though the CMAA’s Wednesday night viewings still average around 3,500 to 5,000 visitors a year, Germann is regretful that he can’t show the public more.

“The majesty of the sky just isn’t there anymore,” he says. “We can show the moon, Mars, some star clusters, but no galaxies, no Milky Way . . . Even if we get it back to where it was ten years ago, it would be considered a victory.”

But with the growth of the downtown area, and the need for more lighting along with it, that’s one possibility that probably isn’t on the horizon.