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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Delhi’s Disappearing Night Sky -Malavika Vyawahare

Delhi’s Disappearing Night Sky -Malavika Vyawahare

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published Published on Nov 15, 2012   modified Modified on Nov 15, 2012
-The New York Times blog

You could be pardoned for thinking that light pollution is someone’s idea of a Diwali joke.

With concerns about rising air pollution hanging over India’s capital like the thick blanket of smog that appeared a few weeks ago and activists against noise pollution jostling to be heard over the burst of holiday firecrackers, the relatively benign problem of light pollution may not seem too important.

But astronomers in New Delhi are keenly lamenting what they call the “loss of the night,” and with it, the view of the stars. They say they feel the loss especially at this time of the year, as the smoke of Diwali firecrackers fills the skies.

“One day the children will be singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ without even knowing what stars are,” N. Rathnasree, the director of the Nehru Planetarium in Delhi, said in a phone interview.

The Indian capital’s fast growth has come with a building boom, and a skyrocketing number of high-rises, lighted highways and open-all-night gas stations. The urban development minister recently declared that there is no alternative to high-rise buildings in Delhi.

The National Capital Region currently has more than 1,000 high-rise buildings, mostly concentrated in Gurgaon and Noida, according to Emporis, a global provider of building information.

Residents of bustling, skyscraper-dominated cities like Hong Kong, New York and even Mumbai have long resigned themselves to seeing stars mostly while on vacation in rural areas. But Delhi residents until recently were able to spot familiar constellations at night, thanks to the city’s sprawling low-rise layout and the (now-disappearing) farmland that surrounded the metropolis.

“Thirty years ago you could see the Milky Way in the Delhi skies,” said Raghu Kalra, secretary of the Amateur Astronomers Association Delhi, in a telephone interview. “Today,” he said, “you can count the stars on your fingers.”

The number of stars visible in Delhi skies has gone down by at least 5 percent every year from 2008 to 2011, said Chander B. Devgun, president of Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), a nongovernmental organization that promotes science through astronomy.

While many think only air pollution is to blame for the dwindling number of twinkling stars, astronomers say light pollution also plays a significant role. The impact of light pollution, or the presence of obtrusive artificial light, is increased by the presence of air pollution. Particles in the air reflect and scatter the light – that’s how the thick gray cloud that envelopes Delhi every Diwali gets its eerie glow.

It’s not just Delhi that is being affected by light pollution. As India’s cities get larger and more populous, the country’s observatories are being relocated.

The Uttar Pradesh State Observatory, for example, which was once located at Varanasi, in the plains, had to be shifted to Nainital, Uttarakhand, as early as 1955 because of poor observing conditions. As development has crept up the hills, the institute, now called the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, has decided to set up India’s largest optical telescope at Devasthal, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Nainital, which will become operational next year. “The light pollution from Nainital city is one of the important factors which led us to choose a different site,” said Brijesh Kumar, a scientist at the institute.

There is hardly any scientific research on the impact of light pollution in India, and only a handful of attempts to measure light pollution, which generally involve citizens in collaborative efforts to collect qualitative data.

The Nehru Planetarium, along with the amateur astronomers’ group, started the Light Pollution Survey project in 2009, which allows ordinary people to send in data about the number of stars visible at a particular location at a given time. Project Dark Skies, which was initiated by SPACE, aims to restore the “charm of unpolluted star-filled skies back to the present generation,” through more efficient use of lighting fixtures and other illumination devices, including street lights, security lighting, facade lighting and night lights at recreational establishments.

SPACE recommends, among other things, positioning the light fixtures better so that the light falls only on areas that need to be illuminated. It also suggests technologically improved designs that use less power for the same level of brightness.

In 2009 the organization joined hands with Globe at Night, an international citizen-science campaign, to conduct the “Great Indian Star Count,” which contributes to a worldwide star count. The global campaign invites people to go “star hunting” and report their observations at specific times during the year. Global results from the last seven years show that on an average the participants in the campaigns saw brighter skies and fewer stars over time.

In the campaign held this year, India logged the largest number of observations, after the United States, some 2,472 of the total 16,850 observations. These observations are mapped according to limiting magnitude, a measure of luminosity that runs on a scale of zero to seven. The higher the limiting magnitude, the more stars will be visible.

The brightest stars are easily visible, but they are also fewer in number. In a region where the limiting magnitude is seven, the faintest stars are also visible, which could mean seeing more than 4,000 stars fill the night sky.

For India, the map indicates that the majority of the observations lie between zero and four, which means many of the faintest stars are not visible. In the region in and around Delhi, the measurements lie in the range zero and two, which means only about 20 to 40 of the brightest stars can be seen with the naked eye.

The trend alarms local astronomers, but for the most part, Indians are unaware that light pollution even exists, let alone affects their lives, said Ms. Rathnasree of the Nehru Planetarium. But she said the vanishing stars never fail to strike a chord with many who visit the Nehru Planetarium for a public show called “Yeh Tara Woh Tara” (“This Star, That Star”), which issues a strong warning about the growth of light pollution.

Indian astronomers aren’t alone in their concern. “The City Dark,” by the American filmmaker Ian Cheney, chronicles the growth of light pollution in the United States. The documentary looks at some solutions to light pollution, but “darkness seems to be fighting a losing battle,” a New York Times review said. “This film makes you want to go find a starry sky to camp under quickly, before it’s all gone.”

For Indians, Mr. Kalra had a more practical solution. “It is easy to get rid of light pollution,” he said. “Just switch off lights you don’t need. If nothing, it would help curtail our electricity consumption.”

The New York Times, 14 November, 2012, http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/delhis-disappearing-night-sky/?smid=tw-share

Tagged with: Pollution



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