Light pollution poses serious threat to astronomy, skywatching and more, study says

Astronomers are once again ringing alarm bells about rising light pollution destroying pristine night skies. This time, though, their worries extend beyond their core discipline."We astronomers are sort of the canary in the coal mine," James Lowenthal, a professor of astronomy at Smith College in Massachusetts, said last week at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Practically every species that's studied is affected negatively [by light pollution]."With eyes on the sky, astronomers have long voiced concerns about increasing yet mostly unregulated artificial urban lighting and satellite megaconstellations such as SpaceX's Starlink impacting valuable observations of deep-space objects by ground-based observatories, which are considered the real workhorses of space science and are more severely impacted by light pollution than their space-based counterparts.Related: Light pollution is erasing stars from the night sky at a breakneck pace. It's on...