Dark Skies are Beautiful

Published October 2, 2025

Dark Skies are beautiful and to be valued.

When a friend suggested I cover local light pollution, it seemed to violate this column’s “Beyond the County Line” theme, until I realized it could be a local window into a global problem. Regardless, it did get me thinking. So, here we go.

Since my parents were both planetarium directors, a big part of my youth involved looking at the night sky. And bundled with the school’s amazing planetarium, there was a reasonable, albeit small, telescope which my father was in charge of for a bit, rotating dome and all. We also happened to own land near Fort Davis with a stunning view of the McDonald Observatory. This taught me the first rule of stargazing: less light is always better.

Depending on where you live in the county, we have different opportunities to see the Milky Way. While stunning in perfect darkness, it quickly vanishes with even minimal light pollution. The term itself highlights a tension: what one person calls a safety light, another calls pollution. This concept of looking at the same thing with differing perspectives plays out repeatedly in life.

Rather than make a stand on light pollution, I want to share some amazing things happening thanks to dark skies. A perfect example is the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Its location provides the pristine viewing conditions astronomers need, but the real story here isn’t just about the location.

What makes the Vera C. Rubin Observatory a game-changer is its ability to see a massive chunk of the sky all at once. Its special telescope can capture an area 40 times larger than the full moon in a single snapshot. To photograph such a vast area in stunning detail, it’s paired with the largest digital camera ever built. It’s so powerful it would take over 375 HD TVs to display just one of its images. Its mission is to photograph the entire southern sky every few nights for a decade, creating a cosmic movie that will catalog billions of new objects and change our understanding of the universe.

As a life-long techie, I’m blown away by the sheer volume of data this observatory will generate which is a staggering 20 terabytes every single night. Just managing this digital flood of data is an incredible feat, requiring a complex system to process and share the images with scientists worldwide in near real-time. But this technology isn’t just about big numbers; it’s about creating a dynamic movie of the cosmos, allowing us to easily spot and track anything that moves or changes in the night sky.

Returning to our underlying theme, our dark skies are disappearing at a problematic rate. Studies show light pollution is accelerating so fast that a child born today in an area with 250 visible stars might see only 100 by their 18th birthday. That’s a loss of more than half the night sky in a single generation.

As a huge fan and a personal user of the incredible global connectivity from SpaceX’s Starlink technology, I also appreciate that it is contributing to a sky filled with a new breed of communication satellites from both SpaceX and Amazon. But these newcomers are only part of the picture. There are other functional satellites that have been circling the globe for decades, plus the vast amount of space junk. This includes old satellites that are no longer working and the debris left behind from launches and mistakes. This combined light, reflected from a growing blanket of man-made objects, is what scientists refer to as “artificial skyglow.” Now you know.

This is a classic trade-off. We benefit from technologies like GPS, even as the satellites that system relies on add to the overall skyglow. I’ll be the first to admit that this specific cost seems tiny compared to the enormous benefit of global navigation. The real issue, however, is one of accumulation. A sky doesn’t vanish all at once; it fades away one “tiny cost” at a time.

Here on Earth, the unforeseen consequences of our lighting choices are coming into focus. Cities are now facing battles over blue-rich LED streetlights, and the stakes may be higher than just a clear view of the stars. This artificial light is an endocrine disruptor, capable of interfering with our hormones and posing risks to our health, as we are simply lighting our streets. Who knew?

But it’s not just impacting humans.

Light pollution is driving a measurable decline in insect populations by throwing their fundamental rhythms into chaos. While fewer annoying bugs may sound like a perk, the reality is a yet-to-be-fully-understood ripple effect through the food web. The loss of these insects means plants lose pollinators and a primary food source for birds, bats, and fish simply vanishes.

And it’s not just bugs. Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Audubon Society, the International Dark-Sky Association and officials at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have reached similar conclusions regarding negative impacts on migratory birds. Their combined evidence confirms that artificial light pollution is a real and significant threat as the artificial glow from our towns and roadways fatally attracts and disorients migratory birds, disrupting their celestial navigation and causing deadly collisions or sheer exhaustion.

So, none of these facts are necessarily tied to my friend’s initial call for Bosque County citizens to dial back the obnoxious lighting. But it is all somewhat related. Whether you’re motivated by global science, local ecology, or personal health, the conclusion is the same: how we light our homes and businesses matters. We don’t need to bank on seeking low-light “astrotourism” coming to Bosque to see the benefits. Preserving our natural dark skies is far more than an aesthetic choice; it’s an investment in our county’s health, economy, and unique character.

And just to take these final sentences back Beyond the County Line, did you know that the Paul and Jane Meyer Observatory – typically considered tied to Clifton – is actually just beyond the county line? Yep. It’s in Coryell County – barely.

 

And beyond this, let’s see what’s next!

J Matt Wallace