Where have all the stars gone???

The other day I was driving at night somewhere near Mono Lake, CA and my daughter suddenly looked out and exclaimed "Nakshathra mama". And I looked out too and saw a clear, cloudless sky filled with stars. And immediately, I was nostalgic. That night sky reminded me of the sky I used to see at night in my childhood.

The childhood in which there was no TV and so after dinner, time would be spent by sitting outside under the sky enjoying the cool breeze with all the adults discussing gossip or the days events.

But now, the few times that I do gaze up at the night sky, I find that there are no stars or at least not as many as there used to be. Where have all the stars gone???

It would be highly unscientific of me to even remotely think that the stars have all vanished. Its just that most stars (except the very bright ones) are not visible any more at night. And who is to blame? Who else but us.

"Light Pollution". It is defined as excessive or obtrusive light created by humans. Is there nothing that we have left unpolluted? Air, water, noise, environment, and now finally even light. But in a different sense. We have not polluted light itself the way we have polluted water and air. We are only polluting the environment and ecosystems by producing too much light.

And so, if you live in a city, there is so much light that human activity produces that our eyes get distracted and so the light from the stars does not reach them. And so, we feel that the stars have vanished.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution or http://www.darksky.org/. What is heartening is that a lot of towns and cities in the US are coming up with light ordinances which controls how much light is produced and also how it is directed. For eg: street lights will be forced to shed their light downwards on the ground only and not in all directions as they do now.

I just hope and pray that one day my children or my grand-children will not think of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as just a nursery rhyme.