APOW: Astronomy Picture Of the Week

[Evan]

This was taken last night looking north to Williams Lake. Over the years the city and the mills have installed thousands of street and yard lights, many of them sodium vapour. When the night started it was very clear and there was almost no sky glow even in the direction of town so I set up for an all night time lapse sequence similar, but longer, than the one I made recently.

As is often the case not long after I started taking frames clouds began to move in. In this case they came in from the northwest over the town first and are strongly illuminated by the mixture of mercury vapour and sodium vapour lighting. While it spoiled my time lapse session to some degree I did get an interesting contrast of colours between the night sky and the clouds.

I wonder how long it will take for those responsible for the design of lighting to realize that lighting up the sky is a total waste of energy?