SAVING THE NIGHT SKY.

LIGHT pollution; CORALS; SUBURBS; PANORAMIC cameras

Luginbuhl, a former astronomer at the nearby U.S. Naval Observatory who has worked to protect Flagstaff's skies for four decades, knows the field of dark sky science and its progress better than almost anyone. Not so with light pollution, even though astronomers looking through telescopes may have been the first to really notice it. As light pollution in nearby Tucson ballooned, Kitt Peak astronomers found allies such as Tim Hunter, a doctor who had grown up seeing the Milky Way through elms in the Chicago suburbs, then watched helplessly as artificial light dimmed the galaxy just like Dutch elm disease rotted the trees. In 2017 the U.S. National Park Service deployed an ultrasensitive panoramic camera outside both Flagstaff and the similarly sized city of Cheyenne, Wyo., which does not have comparable dark sky ordinances. [Extracted from the article]

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