Taking Back the Dark Skies
The Milky Way.
This is Passport to Texas
The night sky once offered stunning displays of twinkling stars and planets. These marvels still exist, but light pollution masks their brilliance.
Often what we see that in is the form of what we call skyglow.
Folks in urban areas know it best as a haze of light that hangs over their cities. John Barentine is with the International Dark Sky Association.
Our mission as the IDSA is to preserve and protect that nighttime environment and heritage that we have of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting.
Awareness and simple fixes can help take back the night.
Some of the things that we try to do, is to get people to look at the quality of the lighting that they’re using…to think about [whether] the amount of light that’s being put on the ground sensible for the task at hand…and are all the lights fully shielded so we’re not always blasting light [up into the night sky] from the ground.
Experience dark skies at some Texas State Parks.
Enchanted Rock State Natural Area in the Hill Country, and Copper Breaks State Park in North Texas. We have a very active chapter of our organization in Texas. I would say that the reason that this has all come about, is that Texas being largely rural, and having this tradition where — the stars at night are big and bright – that a lot of people consider the dark night sky to be part of the cultural history of the state, and find it worth preserving.
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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