Darkish Skies Over the Whites

Identifying the What, Why, and Where of Regional Light Pollution

By Ethan Daly

Six miles into New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest on the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area boundary, the stars shine bright. Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper, and Little Dipper are all visible. Venus is a buttery white dot outshining the rest. In the distance, on this particular night, a faint pink mass of Aurora Borealis dances across the sky.

It’s not a bad view. In fact, it’s a great one compared to what the majority of the world’s human population sees on a nightly basis.

And yet, bordering the visible ridges is a soft white glow that obscures the planets and stars above. Looking back towards Route 302, the stars are invisible, replaced by a glare generated by unseen lights.

Amidst myriad global crises, light pollution falls by the wayside. Its researchers are motivated, if not obsessive in spreading the latest science on its impact. And yet, every year, more lights turn on around the world, especially in the Mt. Washington Valley, obscuring the North Country’s stars and impacting its ecosystems.

Typically, light pollution in the North Conway village area would easily drown out the chances of such a photograph. But on the night of October 10, 2024, a strong geomagnetic storm, triggered by a solar flare and coronal mass ejection (CME), brought the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) to unusually low latitudes. The aurora was visible as far south as Florida, and even in urban areas with much higher levels of light pollution. Photo by WiseguyCreative.com

DarkSky International, an advocacy organization working to restore the nighttime environment, defines light pollution as “the human-made alteration of outdoor light levels from those occurring naturally.” DarkSky argues that in addition to altering our view of the universe, light pollution has negative impacts on wildlife, human health, and the economy.

Douglas Arion, a former professor of physics and astronomy, is a local expert on these impacts. In 2012, he launched a program called “Mountains of Stars” that offers astronomy-based educational experiences aimed at changing people’s attitudes towards the environment.

Arion is a spry, mustached man whose quick movements and speech convey the urgency of action. After quickly pointing out the inadequacy of the coffee shop’s lightbulbs, he mentions he grew up in Queens, New York. He first visited the White Mountains 60 years ago on family vacations. The stars blew him away.

“The sky was a lot darker than it is now,” he says, not pausing to reminisce. “In fact, the sky was a lot darker 10 years ago than it is now. And I have the data to support it. The sky has been brightening up.”

Arion’s data is the following: From his backyard in Twin Mountain, he measures sky brightness using a Sky Quality Meter. In the last five years, brightness increased by 35 percent.

He also points me to a study done by the Globe at Night program. Using citizen science measurements, they found that between 2011 and 2022, global sky brightness increased by 9.6% per year. At this rate of change, a location with 250 visible stars would only have 100 visible stars in 18 years, the duration of a human childhood.

NOTES ABOUT THIS MAP: This light pollution map is an estimation based on satellite data compiled by David Lorenze and The Earth Observation Group (EOG), who specialize in nighttime observations of lights and combustion sources worldwide. This may not take weather into account–humidity in particular. The map also doesn’t take elevation or terrain into account. An observing site on a mountain top will often have a much clearer sky because you’re above a lot of the haze and air pollution in the lower atmosphere. The map is an estimate to help find the best place near you to see the stars. But sites within the same color zone can have very different levels of light pollution. The only way to know for sure how dark a viewing location may be, is to go there at night. For more information and to compare the years 2006, 2016, 2020, and 2022, visit www.darksitefinder.com.

It’s easy to recite scientific data, but harder to observe this change over a period of time. Luckily, in the Northeast, we can travel back in time astronomically. Arion points me to Northern Maine, where, between the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Maine Woods International Dark Sky Park and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, stars abound, displaying a night sky forgotten.

“The sky up in Northern Maine, really, it’s the only accessible dark side in the country,” Arion says. “It took me a while to push the AMC to do it, but I tried to explain the benefits. This is as important a conservation issue as water or air.”

The Dark Sky Park was certified by DarkSky International through their “International Dark Sky Places Program.” The program ensures that each certified place will steward the nightscape environment, ensuring its quality. Additionally, the AMC established lodges in the area, pioneering a move into astrotourism in Maine.

While parks like this are great, Arion doesn’t want dark sky conservation to resemble the national park model. “That idea is ‘we’re going to protect that, but we’re going to mess up everything in between,’” Arion suggests. “What we want is to take these protected areas and use them as educational processes for making the spaces in between as good as possible.”

While dark skies can still be observed in the White Mountains, regional light pollution is far too common and increasing quickly year after year, as can be seen from the Lonesome Lake area of Franconia.  Photo by WhiteMountainImages.com

The spaces in between would be the Jacksons, Bartletts, Randolphs, and Conways of the Mt. Washington Valley. “We don’t live here because it’s convenient. We don’t live up here because there’s some industry that we all want to be a part of,” Arion argues. “People are here because of the natural environment. If we continue to screw up the natural environment, we’re going to destroy our future economic base.”

A dozen bright lights at this well-known local commercial property in Conway village, flood the parking lot area and everything around it, from dusk to dawn–365 nights, or approximately 4,380 hours annually. While full-time lighting offers consistent illumination (wasted light), the associated costs vs. potential security risks make it a less desirable option. For most businesses, the benefits of outdoor motion sensor lighting plus downward-facing (full cutoff) lighting can easily outweigh the drawbacks. The significant energy and cost savings, combined with enhanced safety features alone, make it a more practical and efficient choice. Photo by WiseguyCreative.com

The main argument for taking action against light pollution.

Any resident of the Mt. Washington Valley has likely driven down Route 16 or 113 and been surprised to see yard lights flooding the side of local mountains, commercial parking lots lit all hours of the night. This lighting is detrimental—and if not managed—could impact the visual grandeur and outpost-like existence of the North Country. “As soon as you go past Concord, you have no sense you’re in New Hampshire anymore. You could be driving in Long Island,” Arion says. “If you keep building more stuff and adding lighting up here, it won’t take that long. Maybe a couple of generations.”

Rachelle Lyons, a professor of environmental science and policy at Plymouth State University, grew up in rural New Hampshire, just southwest of Concord. Her hometown had one blinking yellow light in the center of it. She later lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but eventually returned to New Hampshire. She wanted control over her light. “I felt like when I lived in the city that I had no influence over the light that was flooding the house at night,” Lyons says over the phone. “I found it super disruptive, and it made me think about how disruptive that must be to every other living thing.”

Lyons lectures on light pollution to her students and is aware of the risk to the North Country. She also understands the role that policy can play in shaping lighting solutions. She points to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 as an example.

“This was a federal-level piece of legislation that really invested in the development of infrastructure to bring electricity to every American home. When we did that, we also disrupted that period of darkness all across the landscape,” Lyons explains. “This is where I see policy as the lever to remedy or reduce artificial light at night that has proliferated around the world with little consideration.”

Lyons decided to take action. Working with Arion—and inspired by the town of Carroll, New Hampshire, which had strong lighting ordinances—she used her seat on Bethlehem’s conservation commission to advocate for dark-sky-friendly policy. They held public presentations, raised community awareness on economic benefits, and promoted the coming improvements to human health and wildlife.

In March of this year, new dark-sky friendly ordinances passed with little opposition. Article 2 made changes to the way signs are lit, such as only allowing lights to be externally lit, with the light aimed downward. Article 3 had other specifications for other outdoor lighting, such as limiting new bulbs to below 3000 degrees Kelvin. Put in simpler terms, dimmer and warmer. The articles were homeruns, albeit with grandfather clause, meaning only new lights in Bethlehem have to meet these zoning ordinances; older lights can remain the same.

“If we didn’t have the grandfather clause, I don’t think the ordinance would have passed,” Lyons says. “But people are excited and interested now. And it doesn’t matter what their motivations are—if it’s protecting human health, preserving rural character, thinking about wildlife—people come at it with different motives, but, by and large, they’re really interested.”

The design of outdoor lighting plays a major role in the amount—or lack—of light pollution produced. Non-cutoff lights have no shielding and spray photons in all directions, while those with progressively more shielding (semi-cutoff, cutoff) reduce the amount of wasted light not pointed at the ground. Lights with a full cutoff design are best—these eliminate any light at or above an angle of 90° from the pole and focus their full intensity downward for the greatest efficiency and protection of the night sky. Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly, after International Dark-Sky Association.

With the mention of human health comes the importance of dark skies’ roles instilling circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is a sleeping and waking cycle for all living things that follows the light of day. Artificial light at night can disrupt that cycle, suppress melatonin production and decrease the quality of sleep. This disruption increases the risk for depression, obesity, heart disease, and even cancer in humans.

By extension, the impacts are the same on wildlife. Migration and breeding patterns are altered. Arion likens the impact of background light on breeding to loud music at a party.

“You see somebody really cute across the room, but you can’t get their attention because the music’s too loud,” he says. “That’s what’s happening here. There’s so much background light that the insects can’t find the sources they need to go after. If they can’t pollinate, fewer things flower, which means more insects dying off, and then birds can’t eat them. It’s all connected.”

Too often, outdoor electric lighting installations at night are overlit, left on when not needed, and harmful to the environment. As a result, light pollution is a growing global issue that can negatively affect our environment and impact our quality of life. DarkSky and the Illuminating Engineering Society jointly published the Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting to prevent and reduce light pollution through the proper application of quality outdoor electric lighting.

The impacts on wildlife are part of what drove Nancy Clanton to found Clanton & Associates, a lighting design and engineering firm pioneering new ways forward for cities and towns in search of better and biologically sensitive light. On a phone call from Vail, Colorado, she rattles off study after study, including one from the Illinois Department of Transportation that found that soybeans underneath streetlights only produce 30 percent of their production versus soybeans that experience full darkness.

“I feel that light pollution is real pollution, and I would love the EPA to designate is as such,” Clanton says. “I found all this data and thought ‘how do we design outdoor lighting that respects the environment?’”

Since this thought, Clanton & Associates got to work, designing the lighting for up-and-coming cities like Fort Collins, Colorado, and Austin, Texas. Clanton herself helped plan the lighting for the White House and Grand Canyon National Park. Beyond federal projects, she finds the best way to initiate discussion in towns without dark-sky-friendly lighting ordinances is through neighborhood organizations, schools, and law enforcement.

“We can locate every single public street light or parking lot light and determine its contribution. And so, we’ll do an inventory of everything a town has,” Clanton says. “Then we talk to law enforcement to see the problem areas of accidents or crime. We ask, ‘Is it overlit, so the criminals can see better?’ ‘Or is it that there’s no lighting?’ But that’s actually rare. Usually, an area being overlit with glare is the issue.”

It’s a common misconception that having lights on in front of stores, schools, and private properties is a deterrent for crime. A well-lit store at night is easier for thieves in the traditional sense; they don’t need flashlights. A better solution is to install motion-sensitive lights or turn floodlights off entirely.

Another benefit of this is a city feeling high-class. North Conway, for example, is a far cry from Clanton’s hometown of Vail when it comes to mountain towns. And yet, as North Conway grows in its popularity, there may be a chance for it to gain notoriety for its beauty, both natural and artificial.

“It’s beautiful to have the downtown area or the walking area be soft and warm in its color, almost like candlelight,” Clanton says. “In Vail, we got everybody to face their lights downwards. The different stores and restaurants are all harmonized so that it looks like a community. When people in the mountains look out at night, they see a softness. That, to me, is enjoyment.”

This enjoyment is possible for New Hampshire’s North Country even with our “Live Free or Die” mindset. Cheryl Johnson, the chair of the Bethlehem Conservation Commission, found that communication was important for local opposition. “We decided that we were going to spend money and do a mailer because we thought it was very important to answer some of those questions and be transparent in this whole thing,” Johnson says. “I was told by a number of people that they really like to have that information.”

Understanding light pollution is the first step. Taking steps to improve lighting, be it in personal homes or businesses, is second. The third is enjoying dark skies above the Mt. Washington Valley. But what would that look like?

“A truly dark sky is one where the Milky Way casts shadows,” Arion says. “If you’re in a dark sky, the only reason you’ll know you have mountains is because the stars stop.”

Because the stars stop. A nightscape like this is far in the future, but it starts with towns working together, taking steps to create warmer, targeted lighting.

It ends with the flick of a switch.