Fluorescent & LED street lighting?

[PatrickWilson]

I am not 100% sure if this is the correct area to discuss this, but seeing that this kind of information is useful to beginners I thought this place was a decent choice..

I'm curious to know if anyone has had any direct experience with the new fluorescent and / or LED street lighting?

There are plans to install a whole heap of these in a few areas in the town nearest to me (HULL) and I wondered how they are in regards to possibly contributing to or helping to diminish light pollution(wishful thinking) and if any filters are available? I'm coming from an Astrotrac / DSLR astrophotographers point of view..

Any answers appreciated, many thanks

Patrick

[beamish]

Patrick, we had our street lights replaced a couple of years ago for the new, brighter, white lights- TBH the sky is darker as most of it now goes downward with less spill over in addition they installed less lights , good news is more and more councils are feeling the pinch and where the arguments re light pollution and nuisance have failed, budgets will prevail and councils all over including West Yorkshire, and doubtless Leeds, will start to turn them off at night :)

[PatrickWilson]

Thanks Beamish.. thats encouraging, im chasing every aspect of this lighting upgrade, emailed the local council etc awaiting responses. But fingers crossed I hope the skies darken a little around here. I think ill take some before and after reference images.

regards

Patrick

[magic612]

Patrick the thing to ask them about is the color temperature of the lights. The lower the color temperature, the better. There's more information than you probably even want to know about it here:

Light Color Strongly Affects Environmental Impact

[PatrickWilson]

Thats a great article.. Ill be having a good read of that.. !

[magic612]

I am fortunate to have such a well-informed organization right nearby to me. We are slowly making some progress in my state and hopefully soon in the city of Chicago, but it can be frustrating especially when the low energy cost of LED lights may undo much of the good we have accomplished. The key is educating people to aim/shield lights down, use only the minimum amount of light needed, and that color temperature matters too.

[wrinkly]

Budgetary considerations might not be the saving grace from light pollution, Westminster is funding the Croydon street light renewal.

The good point is as mentioned by Beamish, an excellent brew. The lights are better designed and should spill less light.

[lukebl]

I suspect that the impact on observing may well depend on whether you are primarily a visual or an imaging astronomer.

From a visual perspective, with LED lights you might get slightly darker sky with less light spillage. From an imaging point of view, though, even if the sky may appear slightly darker, on long exposures the light pollution will start to appear and it won't be so easy to filter out. H-a imaging, for instance, cuts out almost all current light pollution, whereas with LED lighting I'm not sure that the filter would work so effectively.

I hope I'm wrong in this assumption. Can anyone clarify?

[PatrickWilson]

Thanks for the responses, I am primarily an imager and so was slightly concerned that the broader frequency spectrum LED lighting would be near impossible to filter out, my Astronomik EOS clip does work rather well for now. I am still waiting for a response from my local council regarding wavelengths and information but as yet nothing, they will be feeling my wrath soon if this goes ignored!

[SantosKasten]

Thanks for the responses, I am primarily an imager and so was slightly concerned that the broader frequency spectrum LED lighting would be near impossible to filter out, my Astronomik EOS clip does work rather well for now. I am still waiting for a response from my local council regarding wavelengths and information but as yet nothing, they will be feeling my wrath soon if this goes ignored!

Thank you for answering. I found out what was the issue. On automap settings midi input port was off. So i selected Automap and everything works now. What an easy solution. It seems i was messing with automap and changed that.