Battle of the street lamps

[Chris M48]

I live next to a park that has a number of aggressive lamps as does the adjacent street.  

Using 5 x 50mm downpipes from B&Q and blackout fabric from eBay I've been able to use the garden for stargazing and imaging without the need for 15ft fencing.

It dismantles and stacks away in a couple of minutes.

Works for me.  

[Dave In Vermont]

Nice methodology!

What's scaring me is the USA is replacing streetlights - as they need it usually - with LED's. These are full-spectrum lights which really can't be filtered out. I wish people would wake up to the fact that the vast majority od burgaries occur in daylight, not at night. The last thing a burglar wants is to meet the "ARMED HOMEOWNER." I'll never forget the horror (and the smell) a burglar exhibited when he ran into me while trying to break into my neighbor's house - in daytime. "Meet my little friend!"

Clear & DARK Skies,

Dave

[Tonynexevo925]

That is a great solution. I'm looking for something to block an intermittent neighbouring security light - this looks like it might work for me.

[mcolbert]

Dave, your comment about LED's being used for streetlights conjures up some interesting images.

I remember on flights to Europe at night, looking down, seeing the yellowish sometimes orange glows from cities. I wonder how that will look if / when

LED's are introduced.  Part of the mystery would be lost.

michael

[kalasinman]

In regards LED street lights, I saw an idea floated elsewhere that a filter could be designed to cancel the primary pulse, perhaps similarly to noise cancelling tech.

[Dave Lloyd]

In regards LED street lights, I saw an idea floated elsewhere that a filter could be designed to cancel the primary pulse, perhaps similarly to noise cancelling tech.

LED flicker.JPG

This is encouraging. Mainstream led lighting is quite a recent innovation and if a filtering process is possible sure as can be it will be developed. It may be similar to active 3d t.v glasses.

[palatine]

Dave, your comment about LED's being used for streetlights conjures up some interesting images.

I remember on flights to Europe at night, looking down, seeing the yellowish sometimes orange glows from cities. I wonder how that will look if / when

LED's are introduced. Part of the mystery would be lost.

michael

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Chris Hadfield took this over Berlin

Shows the east and west of the city and the difference in old and new street lighting.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ajohn]

The lights round me have been changed recently. They were low pressure sodium and powerful. Some time ago I managed to obtain a filter that just killed the main sodium line they produce. The difference was amazing more or less like going to a dark site. These filters disappeared off the market long before the lights did.

They tell me the latest ones are LED but the spectrum looks wrong to me so probably high pressure sodium. More powerful and higher than they were of course even though all they really need to do to achieve moon light brightness. I'm part way through knocking up a spectroscope to see what they put out.

Worse still they have put lower powered LED lighting round the corner and used high CRI lighting - this has to put out an awfully high amount of blue light to achieve the colour balance they achieve. They are extremely inefficient because of this. They will be using more electricity than the lights that were there before.

It seems councils will cut all sorts of services in the UK to save money yet still spend large amounts of money on "updating" street lighting which always involves more and more of it one way or the other. It even just has to brighter and lamps closer and closer together.

Not that this annoys me of course 

John

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[Beulah]

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Chris Hadfield took this over Berlin

Shows the east and west of the city and the difference in old and new street lighting.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's terrible!!

Would this be caused by installing unshielded LED lighting? All the LED streetlamps (including the 2 outside my house ) seem to be directed downwards.

[palatine]

i'm guessing its the reflection of the directional lamps as they are so bright but could be a bit of both

[Ajohn]

The new lighting they are putting up in B'ham is a lot more powerful than what was there before - the usual tall low pressure sodium lights as used in most cities. They are also a lot taller now.

The history of lighting is interesting.

Lots used to be turned off at 11 PM - everybody should be asleep in bed so that they wouldn't be late to work in the morning maybe. Ok if the moon was up if some one was out and about and the skies at least partly clear. Some people who live in real rural areas are probably aware of that but would still like more lighting.

Some one had the idea of leaving them on all night at junctions and round abouts and it seems this did reduce accidents.

Due to the accident reduction they then moved to on all of the time.

While this was all going on people complained about driving through maybe a mile or what ever of street lights and then being in a black hole suddenly when they had passed through them. True as it takes time for eyes to adjust to headlamp light levels.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they were dimmer.

Also going back in time but not all that far there was a drive on dipped headlights campaign for 2 reasons. Mainly in cities as people were driving on side lights as they could see perfectly well via the street lights.  Probably a lot of gas lighting about for most of their driving experiences. The 2nd reason, done by many, same sort of people who had been doing it for years, driving on country roads with side lights only if they could  - the moon again. 

More - there was a press campaign when low pressure sodium took off big time. It illustrated that people wearing certain coloured clothes didn't stand out very well especially standing directly under one.

I understand the councils were there are real observatories are requested to stick with low pressure sodium because it's so easy to filter out. The filters are very narrow band so hardly change light levels at all - but why did they disappear? I bought a SCT some time ago and bought a filter to go with it. Went back maybe a month after to get a 2in one and was told that they couldn't get them any more, only the types that block out lots of light all over the spectrum.

 The thing that sort of gets me about the whole thing is no one seems to have asked the question what levels of lighting are needed. It's easy to see why broader spectrum lighting is desirable but frankly I have doubts about the press campaign. But why ever brighter and brighter. I've seen a claim by a pundit that peripheral vision is improved via brighter lights - rubbish as many of us know - averted vision.

 I feel much better now I have had a rant but feel that official thinking has gone seriously astray in this area. I grew up in a place that used ordinary bulbs with a very long life  for street lighting. No colour problems and plenty of light when it was dark. Stars easy to see too. I know that because when I was a yob I climbed up one and removed the bulb and stuck it in my bedroom and it lasted for years and years.   Maybe I was just curious really and not just a yob.

John

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