Date: February 25, 2009

Title: One of Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper

Podcaster: Sarah Kim for Katja Aglert

Link: Katja Aglert’s website   http://www.katjaaglert.com

Description: The content of this podcast is based on some of the research made for an ongoing art project with light pollution as point of departure by the Swedish artist Katja Aglert. The Podcast include interviews with Ray Diaz, an amateur astronomer from Queens, NY; Tom Callen, astronomer and program producer at the Planetarium of Cosmonova, Stockholm, Sweden and Jennifer Barlow, initiator of the National Dark Sky Week. The narrator is Sarah Kim. Music by Peter Major. Katja Aglert wants to thanks everyone that contributed.

Bio: Katja Aglert is an artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She works in different media such as video, sound, site-specific installations, interventions and text. Her work has been shown internationally and in Sweden including Moderna Museet, Sweden (2008), 4th Int. Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany (2008), Overgaden – institute for Contemporary Art, Denmark (2006). Her current grants include a 2-years Working Grant from Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Visual Arts Fund (2006-2008) and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Swing Space artist in residency grant (2008).

Today’s Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Rossiter & Associates (http://www.rossiters.org/associates), a process improvement consulting firm specializing in energy efficiency for oil refining, petrochemicals and chemical operations. Rossiter & Associates – Energy Efficiency by Design.

Transcript:

Sarah: Imagine a future where the night sky has been completely transformed into a thick layer of artificial light. Imagine future generations who have never seen stars, maybe not even the moon, in real life. What effect would that have on us and the other life forms on earth? These are questions asked by the Swedish artist Katja Aglert in her ongoing art project about light pollution. Ray Diaz, an amateur astronomer from Queens that Katja met in New York says:

Ray: I feel that my kids and the younger kids, are never gonna really have the same kind of interest in something so basic as the sky, because they’re really not getting a good look at it. They can’t see it. I don’t think my kids have ever seen the Milky Way, something that I noticed at a very young age young age you know. My son is 19 and my daughter is 13 and don’t think they have ever looked up and really noticed anything in the sky. And I think mainly because it’s just… you know the view is just so uninteresting now.

Sarah: Light pollution is excess light created by humans and a side effect of industrial civilization. It has severe ecological and astronomical effects, and can cause various health problems for humans. The entire area spanning from southern England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and West Germany, to northern France has a sky brightness of at least 2 to 4 times the normal levels. North America is in a similar situation. From the east coast to the west, and from Texas to the Canadian border, there is  significant global light pollution. Ray Diaz comments

Ray: All of a sudden it is a problem, and it is a big problem. It’s just that it didn’t happen gradually, it seem like it just: BOOM! You know. “OH NO! THE SKY IS GONE! How did that happen?”

Peter Mayor sound: beat

Sarah: In the 19th- and early 20th century it was possible to observe stars from the Stockholm Observatory, which lies in the very center of the capital of Sweden. To enable continued observation of space from the greater Stockholm area. another observatory was built in the mid 19th century. The site chosen was farther away from the center of the city, in a rural area which is now a suburb only 15 minutes away by train. This observatory is, naturally, as well as the one in the city center, no longer in use. Nowadays, if we want to make proper cosmic observations in Sweden, we need to go far north (about 770 miles from Stockholm) to the Esrange Space Center where they facilitate a huge light pollution safe area. Obviously, we can grasp the importance of observing the cosmos for astronomers, but why would it be considered important for everyday people to be able to see the stars these days? Tom Callen, an astronomer and producer at the Planetarium at Cosmonova in Stockholm thinks it is important to be able to see the night sky:

Tom:  I think it helps people get connected with the universe. Give them a feeling of where they are and what their place in it is. If they understand better they motion of simple things like the moon and the planets, they get a better understanding of it. And it could be inspiring. There have been artists and writers and musicians and poets for centuries literary through human history that have gone outside and have been inspired by just standing outside looking at the night sky. So that’s something I am afraid we’re loosing our connection with, with increases of light pollution.

Sarah: Ray Diaz reflects on the question by sharing some of his own experiences observing the universe:

Ray: It really takes you outside of this human experience here which can sometimes be very frustrating and very non-sensical and so much trivial you know stuff going on. And to look up into the sky like that beyond, beyond, beyond all of that, gives me a way of separating from that. Leaving all that worldly stuff behind me, I’m actually traveling through the telescope, you know outside this realm of human nonsense. Things that you worry about or are concerned about. When you’re in a situation like that an you’re observing these things that are millions and billions years old and change very slowly, if at all.  It gives you a sense that “this is really not that important”. It’s more important to be aware of a larger picture.

Sarah: According to the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy, an average yearly growth of light pollution rates as large as five to ten percent has been observed both in the US and in Europe. What about the role of the Planetarium in relation to this?

Many of us would agree that the Planetariums can’t replace the real experience of the night sky, but could it be that they will be our only option in the future if we want to get a glimpse of the universe in urban environments? Tom Callen responds:

Tom: Yeah we have a big part to play there I think because many times when people come to a planetarium, is the first time they’ve seen the night sky. And in most cases it’s probably the first time they’ve actually seen the Milky Way. Because where they live, there has probably been enough light pollution that has taken and lost that band of light that makes up the Milky Way that we see. So for many of them, that’s really their first encounter with a good proper night sky.

Peter Mayor sound: beat

Sarah: Since the early 1980s, a global dark-sky movement has emerged, resulting in several organizations formed by concerned individuals who are now trying to reduce the amount of light pollution. One of these initiatives is the National Dark Sky Week, which was founded in 2002 by Jennifer Barlow of Midlothian, Virginia. The National Dark Sky Week is a week in April, usually during the New Moon, when Jennifer tries to get people all over America to turn off their lights in an effort to temporarily reduce light pollution.

In a Skype conversation, Jennifer explains the driving force behind the event:

Jennifer: I guess people don’t concern light pollution to be one of the big problems that effects civilizations as it is right now because there are so many problems in our society, but this is one of the problems that often gets ignored, and one of the greatest gifts that I feel like we have is the night sky. And if we waste it we are wasting something great and I feel like it has been part of human history for so long, and we can’t turn our back on it now. Not only because it takes away the beauty of the night sky but because it harms the environment.

Sarah: The next time National Dark Sky Week happens is in 2009, on April 20th through April 26th. If you haven’t already, maybe you should give it a try? One of the main things that might be important to address in relation to light pollution is that it’s a problem that we can fairly easily do something about. It’s strongly connected to how we have planned our lighting designs in urban environments until now, and this is something we can influence and eventually change in the future. For example, we can start with ourselves and adjust some of our own lighting habits, as Tom Callen also points out:

Tom: We have a bad habit of leaving lights on all the time, I drive around in my neighborhood and stuff houses where I know there will only be two people, or only one person, every light in the house is on. Which makes no sense at all. You may be downstairs watching television but the entire light on the upstairs, the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room, all those lights are all turned on. Everybody is sitting downstairs watching tv – why is that? That makes no sense to me. When I was at the Smithsonian they’ve done a energy study, and they found that if you were to leave your room for like more then 45 minutes, turn off your lights. Because it was a good way to save energy. So if you went to lunch, to a meeting, or left the building for the day – turn off your lights.

Peter Mayor sound: electricity

Sarah: This is Sarah Kim for the International Year of Astronomy Podcast: One of Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper, by Katja Aglert. Thank you for listening, and turn off your lights!

Save

Save