Because light pollution makes it difficult for us to see stars, it is starting to become one of the biggest problems for astronomers and scientists, especially those who observe the night sky. In many parts of the world, the night sky is never completely “pitch dark” anymore.
“Globe at Night,” a community project that asks its participants to report light pollution by looking at the Orion constellation, has also achieved thought-provoking results. The team evaluated data from 51,351 observations made between 2011 and 2022. A huge amount of data has emerged, but there are shortcomings because the participants did not cover the entire Earth. The team compared the early years with satellite measurements of the sky’s brightness, and found a common ground for 2014 to establish a baseline: In the past nine years, things have clearly gotten worse.
If this trend continues, according to the predictions, the result will be as follows: If a person is born in a place where 250 stars can be seen when he is born, he will be able to see only 100 stars by the age of 18.
From the German Geosciences Research Center, Dr. “What we’re seeing is a really dramatic drop in the number of stars people see compared to this base map from 2014,” said Christopher Kyba. Yes, we can use it. Earth is becoming an increasingly bright planet.”
Kyba also underlines that the situation is not the same for all places. The increase in brightness is more pronounced in the US, but less so in Europe. Taken on average, it turns out that the brightness of the sky has increased by about 7 to 10 percent per year since 2014.
The results of the study were published in the journal Science.
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