The Memory of Stars

One of the things I love most about summer is spending some quality time "Up North" with my family. While we enjoy many different destination, we especially love Mackinac Island (my wife and I met while working for the State Park there in college). Perhaps the most magical time of day on Mackinac is when the last ferry leaves for the night and the throngs of tourists head home. Most people retreat indoors and the only sounds you hear are the clip-clop of horses hooves and the bell ringing on the buoy in the Straits. The best nighttime show, however, is up at Fort Holmes. Here, on the highest point of the Island, you can climb the embankment and lie with your friends on top of the wooden entranceway. On a clear night, the stars are truly astounding! Billions of tiny dots of light twinkle in the dark night sky. Your imagination follows the bright path of the milky way as it spirals through the sky. Falling stars, satellites, and sometimes even the space station all travel across your view. With a pair of binoculars, your view deepens and you can even pick out some of Jupiter's moons. And if you're really lucky, the shifting hues of the Aurora Borealis will put on a spectacular show. When I return to Midland or head to an even larger city, so much of the night sky magic is hidden from view. Lights along streets and in parking lots, office buildings and private homes illuminate our world so completely, we hardly know what it means to walk it the dark. I love attending a Loons game, but the glow from the stadium can be seen for miles around. Technically, all this illumination is called Light Pollution, and it's become a major problem in our modern society. The rhythm of nature (including human nature) depends on cycles of light and dark for feeding, sleep, migration, reproduction and more. Many animals are inexplicably drawn to artificial sources of light and smack into office buildings and cell phone towers. Others scavenge insects under the glow of streetlamps and become easy prey for other animals or automobiles. And all that extra light escaping into the sky is a big waste of energy. This June, the American Medical Association (AMA), issued a series of resolutions in support of energy efficient lighting technology. They read: RESOLVED That our AMA advocate that all future outdoor lighting be of energy efficient designs to reduce waste of energy and production of greenhouse gasses that result from this wasted energy use, and be it further

RESOLVED That our AMA develop and enact a policy that supports light pollution reduction efforts and glare reduction efforts at both the national and state levels; and be it further

RESOLVED That our AMA support that all future streetlights will be of a fully shielded design or similar non-glare design to improve the safety of our roadways for all, but especially vision impaired and older drivers.

For more information about the importance of a more natural night sky, visit the website of the International Dark Sky Association. And when you go to bed, don't forget to turn off the lights!