Shedding Some Light on Light Pollution
The above image was taken a few years ago by a satellite orbiting our planet. It clearly shows how heavy the light pollution is east of the Mississippi River. What I find equally fascinating and horrific is that one can easily make out I-75, I-85, and I-95 where they wind through metropolitan areas.
Magnifying this very same image yields a revealing view of the Southeastern United States. You can easily make out Miami, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville, Atlanta, and Nashville.
Areas of a bluish color are generally not plagued by light pollution, greenish areas begin to show some adverse effects. Yellow indicates a high degree, red an excessive amount, and white an alarming degree of light pollution.
I imported this magnified image of the Southeastern United States into Adobe PhotoShop, cropped it, and provided the names of cities so that the interested viewer could have some points of orientation. Fortunately, Macon and Warner Robins do not suffer from the same degree of light pollution as Atlanta. The bad news, though, is that these two cities are catching up rapidly, as I’ll try to illustrate in my next post.
I imported this magnified image of the Southeastern United States into Adobe PhotoShop, cropped it, and provided the names of cities so that the interested viewer could have some points of orientation. Fortunately, Macon and Warner Robins do not suffer from the same degree of light pollution as Atlanta. The bad news, though, is that these two cities are catching up rapidly, as I’ll try to illustrate in my next post.
