Author Topic: Sign of the times  (Read 7422 times)

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Offline richard.cs

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #50 on: May 18, 2021, 05:45:58 pm »
I agree, more even lighting would allow the use of less light to achieve the same result. The law says no light emitted above 90 degrees though which effectively bans drop-lens diffusers, and like many laws, it was based on good intentions but brings unintended consequences.

It's perfectly possible to make optics with a sharp cutoff just below 90 degrees and which gives good, even illumination. Optimally the beam pattern should give less light per unit angle straight down and progressively more light per unit angle near to the cutoff. This ensures that the light per length of road is roughly constant.

Such fittings exist, and work well, but there is an optimal pole height and spacing for them. Retrofitting them onto existing poles designed for lights with a different pattern often gives crappy results.* The optical design is easier (cheaper, more compact, etc.) with taller and/or closely-spaced poles because the cutoff angle can be lower, and the brightness ratio between the centre and the edges less.

* But is very common. Adding new poles to reduce the spacing is expensive as you have to dig up lots of cables, etc. Changing the poles, generally to taller ones, is cheaper but still much more than just slapping a new fitting on the end. In the UK there are plenty of 1930s and earlier light poles with modern fittings on top**, and often the resulting light pattern is pretty poor.

** e.g. https://goo.gl/maps/SH7Tcoy2PRnfy5888
 

Offline rdl

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #51 on: May 18, 2021, 05:52:00 pm »
Yeah, it would be nice to get more use out of my telescope.

Why do we feel the need to light up everything at night? We're doing irreparable harm to many animal species that evolved in dark night skies. Human hubris at work...  :palm:
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #52 on: May 18, 2021, 05:55:04 pm »
Why do we feel the need to light up everything at night? We're doing irreparable harm to many animal species that evolved in dark night skies. Human hubris at work...  :palm:

Because people like it, it makes them feel safer, it looks nice, it does make driving significantly safer, it eliminates many of the dark places where crime festers. I do think we could do with much less of it though, generally speaking light levels are much higher than they need to be, and at least in residential neighborhoods like mine the lights are spaced far too far apart to be of any real use. Street lighting could be 1/4 or even less lumens than is typically used and it would still accomplish the goals. That and motion detectors that turn on lights or make them brighter only when there is somebody in the area that is being lit up.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #53 on: May 19, 2021, 03:44:18 pm »
Why do we feel the need to light up everything at night? We're doing irreparable harm to many animal species that evolved in dark night skies. Human hubris at work...  :palm:

That's a good point too, I get that there is a safety aspect, but people survived fine before lights.  We need to stop bubble wrapping society. 

I think a good compromise would be occupancy sensors, roads/area that have no activity the lights would turn off and only come on (slowly dim and not sudden on) if they detect activity.  Not really sure what the best way of doing that would be though, simple infrared sensors would trigger every time a bear or large dog passes by, lasers that are higher than a bear on 4 legs could work but pose a risk to eyes. 
 

Offline PlainNameTopic starter

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #54 on: May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pm »
I ain't gainsaying you, but this kind of thing doesn't help your cause:

Quote
people survived fine before lights

People survived fine before cars.
People survived fine before mobile phones.
People survived fine before landline phones.
People survived fine before post.
People survived fine before concrete.
...

The are LOTS of things people survived fine before. Some of them are actually useful and/or made life better. The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #55 on: May 19, 2021, 04:53:53 pm »
The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights.

So what do we say to nocturnal animals that depend on darkness to hunt (or avoid predators)? Fuck you, my need to party till dawn overrides your need to live?
"That's not even wrong" -- Wolfgang Pauli
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #56 on: May 19, 2021, 06:02:49 pm »
I ain't gainsaying you, but this kind of thing doesn't help your cause:

Quote
people survived fine before lights

People survived fine before cars.
People survived fine before mobile phones.
People survived fine before landline phones.
People survived fine before post.
People survived fine before concrete.
...

The are LOTS of things people survived fine before. Some of them are actually useful and/or made life better. The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights.
But all of the above mostly improve health and over all quality of life. Having too much light at night time, especially the shorter wavelengths is unhealthy and disrupts sleep. I have dark brown curtains and another later of black cloth sewn behind them to block out most of the light at night time.

Streets should be minimally lit, preferably with a low colour temperature to avoid disrupting sleep.
 
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Offline PlainNameTopic starter

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #57 on: May 19, 2021, 06:17:12 pm »
Quote
So what do we say to nocturnal animals

Say whatever you want,  but don't plonk your assumptions on me - I didn't express one way or the other whether doing that stuff is good, bad or ugly, just noted the fact that light is the enabler.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #58 on: May 19, 2021, 07:03:16 pm »
Funny thing is the mercury vapour lamp, before they went to the rubbish low mercury stuff, was pretty much the nearly everlasting lamp, in that in a street lighting application you could simply do a group relamp every 10 years, and in the interim you might have 5-10% of the lamps fail over that period, with the majority still providing around 70% of the light output after the 10 years had passed. You find plenty of 125W MV lamps still in residential use in the USA, on dusk to dawn, and probably still there since the 1980's, providing light to old buildings all over the USA, and not likely to be changed out till they fail. With the original GE or Westinghouse lamp in them, which stayed basicaly the same since the late 1960's when they had figured out how to make a robust lamp, and before the MBA take over which wanted a 5 year life in them, so they cut the area of emitter, cut the arc tube length and cu the mercury dose down.

In street light use it is easy to recycle, you have enough lamps, enough volume all at once, and the crews going out with the right packaging to protect the removed lamps as they replace them, and a box as well. Easy to simply get them, crush and sort into the glass, wash off the phosphor for reuse, wash out the mercury with the phosphor, separate the metals, and do 3 melts to separate out the lead solder, the steel wire and finally sinter the tungsten back into wire.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #59 on: May 19, 2021, 07:40:09 pm »
125W mercury is not a size we had in the USA other than a few cheap imported lights near the end of the mercury era. The classic mercury yard light/barn light used a 175W lamp and the good ones did indeed last a very long time. My grandfather installed one in the late 70s and it ran dusk till dawn and was still working on the original lamp when we sold the house in 2016 after my grandmother passed away. Close to 40 years on the same lamp, and it still looked as bright as a new one. I never climbed up and looked closely at the lamp but I suspect it was one of the GE Bonus Line lamps that used an electrode formulation resulting in white deposits rather than blackening the arc tube.
 

Offline Stray Electron

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #60 on: May 19, 2021, 07:51:45 pm »
Quote from: floobydust link=topic=282439.msg3569147#msg3569147

Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project
25,320 cobra heads replaced
[/quote

  That works out to about $70,000 per street light. How the hell does anyone think that that's economically justified?  Is it any wonder that Detroit is deeply in debt?
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #61 on: May 19, 2021, 07:55:50 pm »
[quote author=floobydust link=topic=282439.msg3569147#msg3569147

Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project
25,320 cobra heads replaced


  That works out to about $70,000 per street light. How the hell does anyone think that that's economically justified?  Is it any wonder that Detroit is deeply in debt?

There's probably more to the story. I can only speculate, but my guess is they're replacing complete installations in a lot of areas, ripping up deteriorated underground wiring, replacing damaged poles, replacing sidewalks and pavement torn up in the process, these sorts of projects are always expensive. In an old city like Detroit it may not be as simple as just going down the street swapping out luminaires. It's possible that Detroit still has some 6.6A series loops like Los Angeles, they've been doing some very expensive retrofit work there to replace many of the deteriorating series loops that were installed from the 1920s up through the 1960s.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #62 on: May 19, 2021, 09:43:25 pm »
Why do we feel the need to light up everything at night? We're doing irreparable harm to many animal species that evolved in dark night skies. Human hubris at work...  :palm:

That's a good point too, I get that there is a safety aspect, but people survived fine before lights.  We need to stop bubble wrapping society. 

I think a good compromise would be occupancy sensors, roads/area that have no activity the lights would turn off and only come on (slowly dim and not sudden on) if they detect activity.  Not really sure what the best way of doing that would be though, simple infrared sensors would trigger every time a bear or large dog passes by, lasers that are higher than a bear on 4 legs could work but pose a risk to eyes.

Quote
Philadelphia has dimmed its skyline after a 'mass collision' killed thousands of migrating birds

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/us/philadelphia-skyline-dimming-birds-collision/index.html
 

Offline Stray Electron

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #63 on: May 19, 2021, 09:53:51 pm »
  It seems to me that considering how zealous some of the Federal agencies are about protecting any kind of endangered or "of special concern" species, that if even one of those were killed in this event, that the USG would immediately shutdown all of the street lights, outdoor advertising, bill boards, and and all of the extremely well lit night time activities and every other source of light pollution in Philadelphia.

  I remember when a major dam project in Tennessee was abandoned in the 1970s after they found some sort of rare snail that no one knew existed and decided that it needed to be protected at all costs under the Endangered Species Act.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #64 on: May 19, 2021, 11:06:43 pm »
The gratuitous lighting that really bothers me are those insanely bright video billboards that are placed in a few spots along major highways. There's at least one a bit South of where I am that I pass by now and then which doesn't seem to have a night mode, it blazes away at full brightness 24 hours a day and at night it's blinding. IMO it's a dangerous distraction to have any sort of video screen visible from the highway, especially when it's something as pointless as advertising.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #65 on: May 19, 2021, 11:13:53 pm »
I don't really care what kind of lights they use most of the time, but when there is fog the narrow orange lines of a low pressure sodium lamp really seem to cut through without creating massive glare.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #66 on: May 20, 2021, 07:42:53 am »
It may also help that low pressure sodium lamps are physically gigantic compared to other HID lamps and LEDs, so the optics are completely different and the light intensity from a given area of the source is relatively low. Despite their complete lack of color rendering they do have a very soft smooth light, generally speaking I prefer them over high pressure sodium.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #67 on: May 20, 2021, 07:56:29 am »
  It seems to me that considering how zealous some of the Federal agencies are about protecting any kind of endangered or "of special concern" species, that if even one of those were killed in this event, that the USG would immediately shutdown all of the street lights, outdoor advertising, bill boards, and and all of the extremely well lit night time activities and every other source of light pollution in Philadelphia.

  I remember when a major dam project in Tennessee was abandoned in the 1970s after they found some sort of rare snail that no one knew existed and decided that it needed to be protected at all costs under the Endangered Species Act.
That sounds amusing, but bear in mind that if those snails died, it might be devastating to the local ecosystem. The river could become overgrown with weed and many fish who depend on the snails for food die too.
I don't really care what kind of lights they use most of the time, but when there is fog the narrow orange lines of a low pressure sodium lamp really seem to cut through without creating massive glare.
I think longer wavelenghts scatter less in fog and being monchomatic light could also help as there aren't different wavelenghts being scattered at different amounts.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2021, 09:35:35 am by Zero999 »
 

Offline Rick Law

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #68 on: May 20, 2021, 09:29:14 pm »
  It seems to me that considering how zealous some of the Federal agencies are about protecting any kind of endangered or "of special concern" species, that if even one of those were killed in this event, that the USG would immediately shutdown all of the street lights, outdoor advertising, bill boards, and and all of the extremely well lit night time activities and every other source of light pollution in Philadelphia.

  I remember when a major dam project in Tennessee was abandoned in the 1970s after they found some sort of rare snail that no one knew existed and decided that it needed to be protected at all costs under the Endangered Species Act.

Sometimes we forget that by all estimates, we are rare.

By all estimates, life started on earth almost right after it can start, implying life is not rare.  Intelligent life is a subset of all life, so we believe intelligent life is rarer than mere life.  By the same logic, we believe technology-capable intelligence is even more rare.

If technology-capable intelligent life is indeed as rare as we think, we are what made earth special.  At least that is what current evidence is pointing.  Without us, earth will be merely another planet with biologicals like plenty of other rocks floating in space are.

So, I suppose, lighting up for us to be safer is not a bad thing, advertisements not withstanding.
 

Offline penfold

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #69 on: May 20, 2021, 09:45:25 pm »
If technology-capable intelligent life is indeed as rare as we think, we are what made earth special.  At least that is what current evidence is pointing.  Without us, earth will be merely another planet with biologicals like plenty of other rocks floating in space are.

So, I suppose, lighting up for us to be safer is not a bad thing, advertisements not withstanding.

Ahh, but what makes humans especially interesting is that we are one of the extraordinarily few species that go to extraordinary lengths to protect other species.
 
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Offline Rick Law

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #70 on: May 21, 2021, 03:49:15 am »
If technology-capable intelligent life is indeed as rare as we think, we are what made earth special.  At least that is what current evidence is pointing.  Without us, earth will be merely another planet with biologicals like plenty of other rocks floating in space are.

So, I suppose, lighting up for us to be safer is not a bad thing, advertisements not withstanding.

Ahh, but what makes humans especially interesting is that we are one of the extraordinarily few species that go to extraordinary lengths to protect other species.

That is where "intelligence" come in, I suppose.  We use our intelligence to access what is harmful to us.  With that analysis, we use our technology-intelligence to create tools to foster some species, and tools to exterminate others.  We are just part of nature, and so we do what nature requires of us.  Why benefits to human should come first?  Without human, this planet would be adding very little to the universe at-large.  There are billions of planet that can sustain life (if current thinking is right), but very few with intelligent technology capable life.

I am on both sides of this light pollution issue,

I used to live in the boonies.  I enjoyed observing the night sky with my electronically controlled 90mm reflector.  In the last 15 years or so, instead of just woods and morning smell of farm (fertilizers), it is now citified - the city moved into what was my boonies.  I can't look in any direction without street lights, cars, and annoying traffic shaking the grounds (de-stabilizing my scope).  My reflector scope has not been out of the box for over a decade now.

Price we pay for progress.  Lights, lights, and more damn lights -- but thankful I haven't yet run into my third deer in the last decade.  So only two cars destroyed.

Best for us to do is "do the least harm" - where it is not necessary (such as advertisement lighting), why harm more.  Where is is necessary, well, may be better to blind the birds than to weep over a family of four in the car that hit the tree.
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Sign of the times
« Reply #71 on: May 21, 2021, 03:53:23 pm »
Ahh, but what makes humans especially interesting is that we are one of the extraordinarily few species that go to extraordinary lengths to protect other species.

Grains have domesticated the local tool using hominid to care for them and extend their domain.  Grains rule the Earth.
 


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