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A call for scientists to halt the spoiling of the night sky with artificial light and satellites

Nature Astronomy volume 7, pages 237–239 (2023)Cite this article

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Unfettered access to dark night skies is rapidly diminishing, due to light pollution and satellite constellation tracks. Scientists should do more to stand up to ‘big light’ and ‘big space’ and preserve this natural resource.

Light pollution, produced both at Earth’s surface and from low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, is rapidly increasing. In the case of light at night, light is considered by the general public as a positive thing per se, with no side effects, notwithstanding the evidence produced by scientific research in the last decades. Yet artificial light at night (ALAN) is an anthropogenic pollutant, as defined since 1979 by the United Nations1: “‘Air pollution’ means the introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the air resulting in deleterious effects of such a nature as to endanger human health, harm living resources and ecosystems and material property and impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment, and ‘air pollutants’ shall be construed accordingly,” where2 “‘energy’ is understood to include heat, light, noise and radioactivity introduced and released into the atmosphere through human activities.”

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Fig. 1: Comparison between a dark night sky and one affected by ALAN.
Fig. 2: Starlink satellite trails impact the night sky over Carson National Forest, New Mexico.

M. Lewinsky/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank P. Marchant and S. Gallozzi for interesting discussions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain

    Fabio Falchi

  2. CieloBuio – Associazione per la Protezione del Cielo Notturno, Varese, Italy

    Fabio Falchi

  3. ISTIL – Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute, Thiene, Italy

    Fabio Falchi & Pierantonio Cinzano

  4. Independent scholar, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain

    Salvador Bará

  5. Física, Escola Superior de Saúde, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Raul C. Lima

  6. IA – Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Univ Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Raul C. Lima

  7. Agrupación Astronómica Coruñesa Ío, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain

    Martin Pawley

Authors
  1. Fabio Falchi
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  2. Salvador Bará
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  3. Pierantonio Cinzano
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  4. Raul C. Lima
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  5. Martin Pawley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabio Falchi.

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Competing interests

F.F. is the President of CieloBuio (an unpaid position); the other authors declare no competing interests.

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Falchi, F., Bará, S., Cinzano, P. et al. A call for scientists to halt the spoiling of the night sky with artificial light and satellites. Nat Astron 7, 237–239 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01864-z

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