It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, January 19, 2023
War in Ukraine: The 'Zero line' in Donetsk region, closest area to enemy
RUSSIAN territory
Issued on: 19/01/2023 -
On the battlefield in Ukraine, the area closest to enemy territory is known as the "Zero line". A team of reporters gained rare access to follow a group of Ukrainian soldiers stationed along that "zero line" in the Donetsk region.
Orthodox Epiphany Tradition Marked by Conflict Near Ukraine Front Lines January 19, 2023 Agence France-Presse
Priests bless the water as servicemen bathe in the icy Siverskyi Donets River next to the Sviatohirsk Orthodox Christian Monastery during the Orthodox Epiphany celebration in the town of Svyatohirsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Jan. 19, 2023.
SVYATOGIRSK, UKRAINE —
Oleksandr used to come every year with his loved ones to the Holy Dormition Lavra monastery in Svyatogirsk in Ukraine's Donetsk region to submerge himself in the freezing river to mark Orthodox Epiphany on January 19.
But this year, the monastery and the tradition have been marked by the almost year-long war with Russia.
"I used to do this with my family," the 34-year-old state investigation service member told Agence France-Presse as he pulled his clothes on after plunging into the river. "Now, I can't anymore, I am alone today."
The river was a dividing line that saw heavy fighting, with Russia temporarily seizing Oleksandr's hometown of Svyatogirsk on the other bank, and the vast monastery complex bears the scars.
The walls are pockmarked by shrapnel, its domes flayed of their golden covering.
The social fabric of the community bears signs of strain as well, as some celebrated the capture of the town by Russian forces.
A Ukrainian serviceman bathes in the icy Siverskyi Donets River next to the Sviatohirsk Orthodox Christian Monastery in the town of Svyatohirsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Jan.19, 2023.
The monastery has also been a focus of tensions, with its abbot in favor of Russia-backed separatists and the allegiance of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which broke ties with Moscow, questioned since the launch of the full-scale invasion in February.
That has not dissuaded 41-year-old Yevgen and a small group of his fellow servicemen in Ukraine's forces from coming to the banks of the Siverskyi Donets to bathe in the water in the ritual marking of the baptism of Jesus.
"This is our land, this is our river," said Yevgen, whose hometown of Schastia also lies along the Siverskyi Donets in territory now occupied by Russia. "Who they have been blessing here before is their own business, it's on their conscience, but it's us who live here." A tradition spanning generations
Descending steep steps in front of the vast monastery complex to the riverbank, the servicemen pulled off their camouflage gear one by one and stepped into a horseshoe-shaped hole carved out of the ice to submerge themselves.
"This is the tradition of our grandfathers, why should we give it up?" said Yevgen.
For 28-year-old serviceman Ruslan, who has taken part in the tradition for six years, faith is a uniting force.
"We're all Orthodox," he said. "We have one religion and one God. It's people who make divisions."
'Almost impossible to come'
Valentyna Rudyk, 86, has been living at the monastery for more than six months since her apartment was destroyed in the fighting.
One of her sons accompanies her down to the water's edge before she lowers herself in and vigorously splashes her face with the breathtakingly cold water.
Another son is "fighting to defend our homeland," she said, but which homeland she means, she would not say.
Valentyna Rudyk, 86, bathes in the icy Siverskyi Donets River next to the Sviatohirsk Orthodox Christian Monastery in Svyatohirsk, near the front line, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Jan. 19, 2023,
She and the Ukrainian military men alike did not attend the service held for the key Orthodox Christian holiday, where dozens of believers worshipped for hours standing under the warm light of candles and the church's immense chandelier.
They emerged bearing cakes and warm drinks down to the water and the sun broke through the clouds as they stripped down and entered the water.
Even with the bustle, local resident Dmytro noted the stark difference from the year before.
Last year, "there were thousands of people coming from different cities," he said, but with movement restrictions in the region and destroyed infrastructure, including the bombed-out bridge next to the monastery, "it's almost impossible to come."
6 hours ago ... Pastushenko is one of about three dozen people who have come down to this spot along the Dnipro River to take the plunge, a tradition across ...
9 Things You Need to Know About Epiphany
The magi followed the star and found Baby Jesus. What are we to make of this mysterious event?
On Jan. 6 (or in the United States, the first Sunday after Jan. 1) the Church celebrates the feast of “Epiphany.”
This feast commemorates the mysterious visit of the magi to the Baby Jesus.
Who were the magi? What led them to visit Jesus? And what lessons should we — and shouldn't we! — earn from this incident?
Here are nine things you should know...
1. What does the word “Epiphany” mean?
“Epiphany” means “manifestation.”
It comes from Greek roots that mean "to show, to display" (phainein) and "on, to" (epi-).
An epiphany is thus a time when something is shown, displayed, or manifested to an audience.
2. What is the feast of the Epiphany about?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Saviour of the world. the great feast of Epiphany celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the wise men (magi) from the East, together with his baptism in the Jordan and the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.
In the magi, representatives of the neighbouring pagan religions, the Gospel sees the first-fruits of the nations, who welcome the good news of salvation through the Incarnation.
The magi's coming to Jerusalem in order to pay homage to the king of the Jews shows that they seek in Israel, in the messianic light of the star of David, the one who will be king of the nations.
Their coming means that pagans can discover Jesus and worship him as Son of God and Saviour of the world only by turning towards the Jews and receiving from them the messianic promise as contained in the Old Testament.
The Epiphany shows that “the full number of the nations” now takes its “place in the family of the patriarchs”, and acquires Israelitica dignitas (is made “worthy of the heritage of Israel”) [CCC 528].
3. When is Epiphany celebrated?
This varies from country to country.
In some countries, Epiphany is a holy day of obligation (Canon Can. 1246 §1). Where that is the case, it is celebrated on Jan. 6.
In the United States, Epiphany is not a holy day of obligation, and its celebration is transferred to the first Sunday after Jan. 1 (source).
4. Why is Epiphany connected with Jan. 6?
Pope Benedict explains:
It is hard to say how far back the beginnings of the Christmas feast go. It assumed its definitive form in the third century.
At about the same time the feast of the Epiphany emerged in the East on January 6 and the feast of Christmas in the West on December 25.
The two feasts had different emphases because of the different religious and cultural contexts in which they arose, but essentially their meaning was the same: the celebration of the birth of Christ as the dawning of the new light, the true sun, of history [The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 106-107)].
Eventually, however, the emphasis on Jan. 6 shifted — particularly in the west (and in some parts of the east) — to reflect manifestations of Christ beside that which occurred at his birth (namely, those that occurred at the coming of the magi, at his baptism, and at the wedding feast of Cana).
5. Who were the Magi?
Pope Benedict explains:
In the relevant sources, the concept of Magi (mágoi) encompasses a wide range of meanings, from the wholly positive to the wholly negative.
To the first of the four principal meanings, Magi are understood to be members of the Persian priestly caste.
In Hellenistic culture they were regarded as “rulers of a distinctive religion,” but at the same time their religious ideas were thought to be “strongly influenced by philosophy,” so that the Greek philosophers have often been portrayed as their pupils (cf. Delling, “mágos,” p. 356).
No doubt this view contains some not easily definable element of truth: after all, Aristotle himself spoke of the philosophical work of the Magi (cf. ibid., p. 357).
The other meanings listed by Gerhard Delling are as follows: possessors and users of supernatural knowledge and ability, magicians, and finally deceivers and seducers. . . .
For the Magi in Matthew 2, it is the first of the four meanings that applies, at least in a broad sense. Even if they were not exactly members of the Persian priesthood, they were nevertheless custodians of religious and philosophical knowledge that had developed in that area and continued to be cultivated there [Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives].
6. Why did the magi come to see Jesus?
They apparently had material of a prophetic nature (some have suggested that they got it from an eastern Jewish community, such as the one in Babylon) that allowed them to identify the birth of the new "king of the Jews" astronomically.
They may have been especially motivated to come see this king of the Jews since there was an expectation at the time that a universal ruler would shortly come from Israel. Pope Benedict explains:
We know from [the Roman historians] Tacitus and Suetonius that speculation was rife at the time that the ruler of the world would emerge from Judah — an expectation that [the Jewish historian] Flavius Josephus applied to [the Roman emperor] Vespasian, consequently finding his way into the latter’s favor (cf. De Bello Judaico iii, 399–408) [Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives].
7. Why did they go to Herod?
Probably, because they assumed the newborn king would be a son of Herod — the current "king of the Jews." Pope Benedict comments:
It is quite natural that their search for the newborn king of the Jews should take them to Israel’s royal city and to the king’s palace. That, surely, is where the future king must have been born [Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives].
This, of course, played into Herod's paranoia for his throne and led to the slaughter of the innocents.
It is hard to know. Some question whether the star was a natural phenomenon at all, pointing out that it seems to lead the magi to Jerusalem, disappear, and then reappear and hover over the house in Bethlehem.
But this isn't what Matthew says. He does not say that the star led them to Jerusalem. They merely report that they had seen the new king's star "in the east" (Matthew 2:2; that is, back in their homeland), which is why they came to Jerusalem.
What he does say is:
When they had heard the king they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was [Matthew 2:9].
This does not necessarily mean that the star appeared to move in the sky in a way that stars don't ordinarily.
Departing from Jerusalem at night, they may have noted on the short (6 mile) trip to Bethlehem that the star was in front of them in the sky — a coincidence arranged by divine providence.
Then, when they got to the house, they noticed it was directly over the house — again, a coincidence arranged by divine providence but not necessarily an unusual motion for a star.
Thus the question of whether it could have been a natural phenomenon remains. Pope Benedict remarks:
Nevertheless, the question whether or not this was an astronomically identifiable and classifiable celestial apparition was not going to go away.
It would be wrong to dismiss it a priori on account of the theological character of the story.
With the emergence of modern astronomy, developed by believing Christians, the question of this star has been revisited [Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives].
Various proposals have been made, including for rare astronomical phenomena like the conjunction of certain planets in certain constellations, or supernovas.
Which of these, if any, might have been the Bethlehem star depends on precisely when Jesus was born, which is too complex a discussion for this post.
9. Does this mean astrology is okay?
No. As the Catechism explains:
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology . . . contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone [CCC 2116].
God may have arranged for certain signs to attend the birth of his Son, but this is the opposite of what astrology involves. Pope Benedict explains:
The Fathers have emphasized a further aspect. Gregory Nazianzen says that at the very moment when the Magi adored Jesus, astrology came to an end, as the stars from then on traced the orbit determined by Christ (cf. Poem. Dogm. V 55–64: PG 37, 428–429).
In the ancient world, the heavenly bodies were regarded as divine powers, determining men’s fate. The planets bear the names of deities. According to the concept prevailing at the time, they somehow ruled over the world, and man had to try to appease these powers.
Biblical monotheism soon brought about a clear demythologization: with marvelous sobriety, the creation account describes the sun and the moon—the great divinities of the pagan world—as lights that God placed in the sky alongside the entire firmament of stars (cf. Gen 1:16f.).
On entering the Gentile world, the Christian faith had to grapple once again with the question of the astral divinities. Hence in the letters he wrote from prison to the Ephesians and the Colossians, Paul emphasizes that the risen Christ has conquered all the powers and forces in the heavens, and that he reigns over the entire universe.
The story of the wise men’s star makes a similar point: it is not the star that determines the child’s destiny, it is the child that directs the star [Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives
Anti-war film 'All Quiet on the Western Front' tops BAFTA nominations "All Quiet on the Western Front" is based on the 1929 book by Erich Maria Remarque
A still from the film 'All Quiet on the Western Front'.Image Credit: IMDB
London: "All Quiet on the Western Front" on Thursday tied as the most-nominated foreign language film in British cinema history, receiving 14 nods for glory at the upcoming BAFTA awards.
German director Edward Berger's anti-war movie ties with Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which won the same number of nominations in 2001.
Elsewhere, dark comedy "The Banshees of Inisherin" and science-fiction comedy-drama "Everything Everywhere All At Once", both received 10.
"Elvis", Baz Luhrmann's biopic of the king of rock 'n' roll, received nine nominations, with classical music psychological drama "Tar" in line for five awards.
The awards ceremony, the highlight of the annual British film calendar and often seen as a forerunner to the Oscars in March, takes place in London on February 19.
BAFTA chairman Krishnendu Majumdar said the range of films recognised by the academy's 7,500 voters gave a "uniquely British perspective" on the world's best films.
"All Quiet on the Western Front", about the experiences of a teenage German soldier during World War I, is based on the 1929 book by Erich Maria Remarque.
It is one of the most influential examples of anti-militaristic literature ever written, translated into over 60 languages and selling more than 50 million copies worldwide.
Just one year after it came out, a US film adaptation by Lewis Milestone was released, going on to win best picture and best director Oscars.
But its subversive message saw the work banned in Germany and targeted in the 1933 book burnings by the Nazis, who accused it of "betraying soldiers".
Filmmaker Berger told AFP last September: "My film stands out from American or British (war) films made from the point of view of the victors."
"In Germany, there is always this feeling of shame, mourning and guilt (surrounding war). It was important for me to present this perspective."
Its BAFTA nominations include for best film, best director, foreign film, adapted screenplay and cinematography, as well as supporting actor for Albrecht Schuch.
The best actor category will pit Paul Mescal ("Aftersun") against Colin Farrell ("The Banshees of Inisherin"), Austin Butler ("Elvis"), Daryl McCormack ("Good Luck to You, Leo Grande"), Bill Nighy ("Living"), and Brendan Fraser ("The Whale").
For best actress, the competition is between Ana de Armas ("Blonde"), Michelle Yeoh ("Everything Everywhere All At Once"), Emma Thompson ("Good Luck to You, Leo Grande"), Cate Blanchett ("Tar"), Danielle Deadwyler ("Till"), and Viola Davis ("The Woman King").
BAFTA Awards Nominations: Netflix’s ‘All Quiet’ Ties ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ Record Edward Berger's German World War I drama secured 14 nominations.
'All Quiet on the Western Front' COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Edward Berger’s gripping, and gutting, World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front continued its extraordinary award season run on Thursday when it picked up 14 BAFTA nominations, leading the pack, ahead of Martin McDonagh’s Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s metaverse action comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once, which received 10 nods each.
The 14 noms tied the all-time record for a non-English-language film, blowing past the 12 nominations secured by Michel Hazanavicius’ silent film tribute The Artist (2011), while equaling the tally scored by Ang Lee’s wuxia masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon more than 20 years ago.
In addition to the expected nomination in the best non-English-language feature category, the war drama picked up nominations for best film for producer Malte Grunert, best director for Berger, best adapted screenplay (co-written by Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) and a best supporting actor BAFTA nom for Albrecht Schuch, who plays veteran soldier Stanislaus Katczinsky, the mentor to the fresh-faced recruit Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer).
All Quiet on the Western Front is the first-ever German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel, first published, in German, in 1929. The book follows the experiences of an ordinary German front line soldier in the trenches. Lewis Milestone’s English-language adaptation won the best picture and best director Oscar in 1930. A U.S. television version from 1979, starring Richard Thomas as Paul Bäumer and Ernest Borgnine as Katczinsky, won an Emmy.
“We are speechless and overwhelmed. It’s an enormous honor to be acknowledged by the British Film Academy,” Berger said in a statement, commenting on the BAFTA nominations. “That the film has resonated with so many people is a testament to Erich Maria Remarque’s extraordinary book, written one hundred years ago and yet sadly still relevant today. It was our north star. The novel’s powerful anti-war message unites us, no matter which country we live in.”
All Quiet producer Malte Grunert called the 14 nominations “overwhelming” and thanked the British Academy for the “incredible honor.” Citing the other BAFTA nominees, Gurnert said it was “humbling to be in such great company. Thank you, BAFTA.”
All Quiet dominated the BAFTA’s craft categories —picking up nominations for James Friend for best cinematography; Sven Budelmann for best editing; Volker Bertelmann for best original score; best production design for Christian M. Goldbreck and Ernestine Hipper; Lisy Christl for best costume design; Lars Ginzsel, Frank Kruse, Viktor Prášil and Markus Stemler for best sound; Markus Frank, Kamil Jafar, Viktor Müller and Frank Petzoid for best visual effects; Simone Bär for best casting; and Heike Merker for best makeup and hairstyling.
Led by All Quiet, Netflix easily won the BAFTA’s distributors’ horse race. The streaming giant reigned supreme with a total of 21 BAFTA nominations —in addition to 14 for All Quiet, Netflix secured 3 for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and one each for Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, the Tobias Lindholm-directed The Good Nurse, Sally El Hosaini’s The Swimmers and Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder.
That tally compares to 14 each for A24 — which received 10 for Everything Everywhere All at Once and four for Darren Aronofsky’s melodrama The Whale starring Brendan Fraser — and Searchlight — which picked up 10 BAFTA noms for The Banshees of Inisherin, three for Sam Mendes’ 1980s-set Empire of Light and a single nomination for Tom George’s West End period crime comedy See How They Run.
Berger’s anti-war epic was a frontrunner going into the nominations. The Netflix movie led the BAFTA longlist with 15 mentions, the most of any film since the BAFTA longlist was reintroduced three years ago. Of the 15 longlist contenders, only Felix Kammerer failed to score a BAFTA nom in the super-competitive best actor category.
The BAFTA bonanza should help maintain the awards momentum behind All Quiet, which is on the Oscar shortlist for best international feature and is considered a frontrunner to make the final five when the Academy Award nominations are unveiled in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Word-of-mouth buzz for the film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September and was released by Netflix worldwide Oct. 28, continues to grow.
Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon translated its record BAFTA performance into four wins, including best director, best non-English-language film, best costume design and best film music. The Artist fared even better at the BAFTAs, sweeping the 2012 awards with seven wins including best film, best director and best actor for star Jean Dujardin.
Crouching star Michelle Yeoh nabbed a BAFTA best actress nomination but no win, an oversight BAFTA voters could correct this year, as Yeoh is nominated in the same category for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Both Crouching Tiger and The Artist went from BAFTA to Oscar success, with the former winning four Academy Awards and later taking five, including best picture.
12-million-year-old whale fossil skull found in Maryland
Members of the Calvert Marine Museum recover a 12-million-year-old whale skull fossil found along the Calvert Cliffs in Maryland.
A whale skull fossil estimated to be some 12 million years old has been found on a beach in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, according to a local museum.
The discovery was made in October by a Pennsylvania man, Cody Goddard, who was searching for fossils and shark's teeth, the Calvert Marine Museum said in a statement.
"It felt like we had won the World Cup of Paleontology!" said Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the museum in the eastern US state.
"We don't yet know what species of Miocene baleen whale this is," he said. "That we will only know once it has been prepared."
The museum said that it took two months to extract and move the skull, which was encased in a hardened block of sediment and weighs around 650 pounds (295 kilograms).
It is the most complete fossil whale skull ever recovered in the Calvert Cliffs area, according to the museum, and has been christened "Cody" for its finder.
Godfrey said the skull has been moved to the museum's Fossil Preparation Lab and specialized tools will be used to remove the sediment that encases most of it, a process that will take many months.
Members of the Calvert Marine Museum examine the 12-million-year-old whale skull fossil found in southern Maryland.
Washington (AFP) – Light pollution is growing rapidly and in some places the number of stars visible to the naked eye in the night sky is being reduced by more than half in less than 20 years, according to a study released Thursday.
The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Science, said the increase in light pollution -- skyglow -- that they found was much larger than that measured by satellite observations of Earth at night.
For the study of the change in global sky brightness from artificial light, the researchers used stellar observations from 2011 to 2022 submitted by more than 51,000 "citizen scientists" around the world.
Participants in the "Globe at Night" project run by the US National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory were given star maps and asked to compare them to the night sky at their location.
The change in the number of visible stars reported was equivalent to a 9.6 percent per year annual increase in sky brightness, averaged over the locations of the participants, the researchers said.
Over an 18-year period, given such star brightness change, a location with 250 visible stars would see that number reduced to 100.
Most of the naked-eye star observations came from Europe and the United States said Christopher Kyba, one of the authors of the study, but there was also good participation in Uruguay, South Africa and Japan.
"The global trend in skyglow that we measure likely underestimates the trend in countries with the most rapid increases in economic development, because the rate of change in light emission is highest there," the researchers said.
The study coincided with the replacement of many outdoor lights with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), but the researchers said the impact on skyglow from the transition to LEDs is unclear.
"Some researchers have predicted that it will be beneficial; others, that it could be harmful because of spectral changes or a rebound effect, in which the high luminous efficacy of LEDs leads to more or brighter lights being installed or longer hours of operation," they said.
According to the study, the global LED market share for new general lighting grew from under one percent in 2011 to 47 percent in 2019.
"The visibility of stars is deteriorating rapidly, despite (or perhaps because of) the introduction of LEDs in outdoor lighting applications," the researchers said.
"Existing lighting policies are not preventing increases in skyglow, at least on continental and global scales." 'Confronted with the cosmos'
Kyba, a physicist at the German Research Center for Geoscience, told AFP that while the team was able to evaluate erosion of star visibility due to skyglow, not a lot of research has been done on its ecological impact.
"There's tons of research on light shining directly on animals and plants," he said. "But it's really hard to do experiments on the impact of skyglow.
"You're not going to do something like just turn off New York City and see what happens in the East River."
Science aside, light pollution has changed the character of the night sky.
"For all of human history, when people went outside at nighttime, they were sort of confronted with the cosmos, at least on clear nights with no moon," Kyba said.
"You'd walk outside and there's the stars, there's the Milky Way. It's there and it's shining down on you," he said.
"And now that's like a really unusual experience," he said. "It surely makes a difference to us as people that we don't have this experience that used to be a very universal experience."
The Globe at Night campaign hosts an interactive data map at globeatnight.org and is seeking volunteers to collect more observations in 2023.
ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY (AURA)
IMAGE: A STARTLING ANALYSIS FROM GLOBE AT NIGHT — A CITIZEN SCIENCE PROGRAM RUN BY NSF’S NOIRLAB — CONCLUDES THAT STARS ARE DISAPPEARING FROM HUMAN SIGHT AT AN ASTONISHING RATE. THE STUDY FINDS THAT, TO HUMAN EYES, ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING HAS DULLED THE NIGHT SKY MORE RAPIDLY THAN INDICATED BY SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS. THE STUDY SHOWCASES THE UNIQUE CONTRIBUTIONS THAT CITIZEN SCIENTISTS CAN MAKE IN ESSENTIAL FIELDS OF RESEARCH. THIS GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATES HOW THE GREATER THE AMOUNT OF LIGHT POLLUTION, AND THEREFORE SKYGLOW, THE FEWER THE STARS THAT ARE VISIBLE.view more
CREDIT: NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA, P. MARENFELD
A startling analysis from Globe at Night — a citizen science program run by NSF’s NOIRLab — concludes that stars are disappearing from human sight at an astonishing rate. The study finds that, to human eyes, artificial lighting has dulled the night sky more rapidly than indicated by satellite measurements. The study published in the journal Science showcases the unique contributions that citizen scientists can make in essential fields of research.
From the glowing arc of the Milky Way to dozens of intricate constellations, the unaided human eye should be able to perceive several thousand stars on a clear, dark night. Unfortunately, growing light pollution has robbed about 30% of people around the globe and approximately 80% of people in the United States of the nightly view of their home galaxy. A new paper published in the journal Science concludes that the problem is getting rapidly worse.
New citizen-science-based research sheds alarming light on the problem of ‘skyglow’ — the diffuse illumination of the night sky that is a form of light pollution. The data for this study came from crowd-sourced observations collected from around the world as part of Globe at Night, a program run by NSF’s NOIRLab and developed by NRAO astronomer Connie Walker. The research reveals that skyglow is increasing more rapidly than shown in satellite measurements of Earth's surface brightness at night.
“At this rate of change, a child born in a location where 250 stars were visible would be able to see only abound100 by the time they turned 18,” said Christopher Kyba, a researcher at the German Research Centre for Geosciences and lead author of the paper detailing these results.
Light pollution is a familiar problem that has many detrimental effects, not only on the practice of astronomy. It also has an impact on human health and wildlife, since it disrupts the cyclical transition from sunlight to starlight that biological systems have evolved alongside. Furthermore, the loss of visible stars is a poignant loss of human cultural heritage. Until relatively recently, humans throughout history had an impressive view of the starry night sky, and the effect of this nightly spectacle is evident in ancient cultures, from the myths it inspired to the structures that were built in alignment with celestial bodies.
Despite being a well-recognized issue, however, the changes in sky brightness over time are not well documented, particularly on a global scale.
Globe at Night has been gathering data on stellar visibility every year since 2006 [1]. Anyone can submit observations through the Globe at Night web application on a desktop or smartphone. After entering the relevant date, time and location, participants are shown a number of star maps. They then record which one best matches what they can see in the sky without any telescopes or other instruments.
This gives an estimate of what is called the naked eye limiting magnitude, which is a measure of how bright an object must be in order to be seen. This can be used to estimate the brightness of skyglow, because as the sky brightens, the fainter objects disappear from sight.
The authors of the paper analyzed more than 50,000 observations submitted to Globe at Night between 2011 and 2022, ensuring consistency by omitting entries that were affected by factors including cloud cover and moonlight. They focused on data from Europe and North America, since these regions had a sufficient distribution of observations across the land area as well as throughout the decade studied. The paper notes that the sky is likely brightening more quickly in developing countries, where satellite observations indicate the prevalence of artificial lighting is growing at a higher rate.
After devising a new method to convert these observations into estimates of the change in skyglow, the authors found that the loss of visible stars reported by Globe at Night indicates an increase in sky brightness of 9.6% per year over the past decade. This is much greater than the roughly 2% per year global increase in surface brightness measured by satellites.
“This shows that existing satellites aren't sufficient to study how Earth's night is changing,” said Kyba. “We've developed a way to ‘translate’ Globe at Night observations of star visibility made at different locations from year to year into continent-wide trends of sky brightness change. That shows that Globe at Night isn't just an interesting outreach activity, it's an essential measurement of one of Earth's environmental variables.”
Existing satellites are not well suited to measuring skyglow as it appears to humans, because there are no current instruments monitoring the whole Earth that can detect wavelengths shorter than 500 nanometers, which corresponds to the color cyan, or greenish blue. Shorter wavelengths, however, contribute disproportionately to skyglow, because they scatter more effectively in the atmosphere. White LEDs, now increasingly commonly used in high-efficiency outdoor lighting, have a peak in emission between 400 and 500 nanometers.
“Since human eyes are more sensitive to these shorter wavelengths at nighttime, LED lights have a strong effect on our perception of sky brightness,” said Kyba. “This could be one of the reasons behind the discrepancy between satellite measurements and the sky conditions reported by Globe at Night participants.”
Beyond wavelength differences, space-based instruments do not measure light emitted horizontally very well, such as from illuminated signs or windows, but these sources are significant contributors to skyglow as seen from the ground. Crowd-sourced observations will therefore always be invaluable for investigating the direct human effects of sky brightness.
“The increase in skyglow over the past decade underscores the importance of redoubling our efforts and developing new strategies to protect dark skies,” said Walker. “The Globe at Night dataset is indispensable in our ongoing evaluation of changes in skyglow, and we encourage everyone who can to get involved to help protect the starry night sky.”
More information
[1] From 2006 to 2010, Globe at Night data were collected based on a paper rather than an online form, so they were incompatible and were not included in this analysis.
This research was presented in a paper accepted for the journal Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abq7781).
NSF’s NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory (operated in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O'odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.
Visibility of stars in the night sky declines faster than previously thought
This is shown by a study in Science based on a worldwide Citizen Science project on light pollution that has collected data over the last eleven years.
GFZ GEOFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM POTSDAM, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE
IMAGE: LIGHT POLLUTION IMPACT 1 – FROM EXCELLENT DARK SKY (LEFT) TO INNER CITY SKY (RIGHT)view more
CREDIT: NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA, P. MARENFELD
People around the world are seeing fewer and fewer stars in the night sky. The change in star visibility can be explained by an increase in the sky brightness of 7-10 percent per year. The rate of change is faster than satellite measurements of artificial light emissions on Earth would at first suggest. This is the finding of a study published in the journal Science, conducted by a research group led by Christopher Kyba of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum with colleagues from the GFZ and the US National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. They analysed more than 50,000 naked-eye observations by citizen scientists around the world from 2011 to 2022 as part of the “Globe at Night” Citizen Science Project. The results show that citizen science data are an important supplement to previous measurement methods.
Light pollution background
Over a large part of the Earth's land surface, the sky continues to glow with an artificial twilight long after sunset. This “skyglow” is a form of light pollution that has serious effects on the environment and should therefore be the focus of research, as Constance Walker, co-author of the study and head of the Globe at Night project of NSF's NOIRLab since its inception, emphasizes. After all, many behaviours and physiological processes of living creatures are determined by daily and seasonal cycles – and thus influenced by light. “Skyglow affects both diurnal and nocturnal animals and also destroys an important part of our cultural heritage,” says Walker. The appearance of the night sky is changing, with negative effects on stargazing and astronomy.
Need for suitable measurement methods
The change in skyglow over time has not previously been measured globally. While it could in principle be measured by satellites, the only current sensors that monitor the entire Earth do not have sufficient accuracy or sensitivity.
A promising approach is therefore to use the observational power of people using the human eye as a sensor, and in doing so – within the framework of Citizen Science experiments – to rely on the power of the crowd. The “Globe at Night" project, initiated by the US National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, has been running since 2006. People all over the world can participate in this project.
With Citizen Science...
Participants look at their night sky, and then report which of a set of eight star charts best matches what they see using an online form. Each chart shows the sky under different levels of light pollution.
“The contributions of individual people work together as if they were a global sensor network, making new science possible,” says Christopher Kyba from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam and the Ruhr University Bochum. Together with his GFZ colleague Yigit Öner Altıntas and Constance E. Walker and Mark Newhouse from NOIRLab, he has analyzed data from 51,351 participants around the world taken on cloud- and moon-free nights between 2011 and 2022. They were obtained from 19,262 locations worldwide, including 3,699 locations in Europe and 9,488 locations in North America.
In order to calculate a rate of change in sky brightness from this data and to take into account that the observers were also at different locations over the years, they made use of a global model for sky brightness based on satellite data from 2014.
...to surprising findings
“The rate at which stars are becoming invisible to people in urban environments is dramatic,” sums up Christopher Kyba, lead author of the study. The researchers found that the change in the number of visible stars can be explained by increases in night sky brightness. In Europe, they found a 6.5 per cent increase in brightness per year matched the data; in North America, it's 10.4 per cent.
To put these numbers into a more understandable context, Kyba explains the consequences for seeing stars in a place with a 9.6 per cent per year increase, which was the average over all locations worldwide. “If the development were to continue at that rate, a child born in a place where 250 stars are visible will only be able to see 100 stars there on his 18th birthday.”
Based on the slower growth in upward emissions seen in satellite data, the researchers were surprised by the speed of this development in skyglow. In fact, for the locations of the observers, the artificial brightness measured by satellite had slightly decreased (by 0.3 percent per year in Europe, by 0.8 percent in North America).
Causes for the difference between measurements from Earth and from space
Christopher Kyba believes that the difference between human observation and satellite measurements is probably due to changes in lighting practices: "Satellites are most sensitive to light that is directed upwards towards the sky. But it is horizontally emitted light that accounts for most of the skyglow," Kyba explains. “So, if advertisements and facade lighting become more frequent, bigger or brighter, they could have a big impact on skyglow without making much of a difference on satellite imagery.”
Another factor the authors cite is the widespread switch from orange sodium vapor lamps to white LEDs, which emit much more blue light. “Our eyes are more sensitive to blue light at night, and blue light is more likely to be scattered in the atmosphere, so contributes more to skyglow,” Kyba says. “But the only satellites that can image the whole Earth at night are not sensitive in the wavelength range of blue light.”
Limits of the study and further potential
However, the Citizen Science approach also has its limitations. For example, the number of participants from different regions of the world determines the significance of spatial and temporal trends. So far people from North America and Europe have had the largest participation in the experiment, and half of the Asian contributions come from a single country: Japan. “The most data comes from the regions of Earth where skyglow is currently most prevalent. That’s useful, but it means that we can’t say much about skyglow change in regions with few observations,” Kyba emphasizes. Especially in developing countries, rapid changes in artificial skyglow are suspected, but there have been few observations so far.
Two conclusions: Lighting policy and Citizen Science
The researchers draw two main conclusions from their findings: On the one hand, they show that current lighting policies, such as the use of LEDs, have not yet brought about any improvement, at least on a continental level, despite growing awareness of light pollution.
“And on the other hand, we were able to demonstrate that the Citizen Science data represent an important supplement to the previous measurement methods,” Kyba emphasizes.
Constance Walker adds, “If we had broader participation, we could identify trends for other continents, and possibly even for individual states and cities. The project is ongoing, so feel free to take a look tonight and let us know what you see!”
Further information on “Globe at Night” can be found here.
Light Pollution Impact 2 – From excellent dark sky (left) to inner city sky (right)
CREDIT
NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, P. Marenfeld
Astronaut photographs of parts of Calgary (Canada) show examples of how lighting changed from 2010-2021: New lighting has been installed and many streetlights have been converted from orange high pressure sodium to white LED. (Note: The photos are not taken with the same settings, and have different spatial resolution. Thus, the 2010 photo appears somewhat brighter.
CREDIT
Images courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, georeferencing by GFZ Potsdam
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)
Observations from citizen scientists worldwide over the past 12 years reveal a worrisome trend – stars in the night sky are becoming more difficult to see due to rapidly growing light pollution. The change in their visibility as reported by citizen scientists is equivalent to a 9.6% per year annual increase in sky brightness, an increase faster than satellites have indicated, and which occurred despite policies to prevent increases in light pollution. To put this in perspective, the authors note that under such sky brightness change, a child born in an area where 250 stars were visible would likely see fewer than 100 stars in the same location 18 years later.
In many inhabited places on Earth, the night sky never fully grows dark. It instead glows with an artificial twilight caused by the scatter of anthropogenic light in the atmosphere. This type of light pollution, called skyglow, is responsible for the visible brightening of the night sky and the erosion of our ability to see stars. Although the ubiquity and luminance of skyglow have increased exponentially over much of the last century, its global change over time is not well understood. Satellites that can measure global skyglow are limited in resolution and sensitivity and are often blind to the wavelengths of light produced by modern LED lights that have come to dominate lighting over the past decade. To better understand how growing light pollution is affecting our view of the stars, Christopher Kyba and colleagues evaluated 51,351 citizen scientist observations of naked-eye stellar visibility from 2011-2022. To determine the background brightness of the night sky, Kyba et al. asked participants worldwide to compare star maps of the night sky at different levels of light pollution to what they could see with their own eyes through the online “Globe at Night” platform. According to the findings, the night sky has increased in brightness from artificial light by roughly 7 to 10% per year, which is equivalent to a doubling of the night sky’s brightness in less than eight years. This increase is much higher than estimates of the evolution of artificial light emissions (~2% yearly) based on radiance measurements taken by satellites. “Perhaps the most important message that the scientific community should glean from the Kyba et al. study is that light pollution is increasing, notwithstanding the countermeasures purportedly put into operation to limit it,” write Fabio Falchi and Salvador Bará in a related Perspective. “Awareness must greatly increase for artificial light at night to be perceived not as an always-positive thing, but as the pollutant it really is.”
For reporters interested in trends, several studies published in Science and Science Advances have reported the rapidly growing issue of light pollution and its environmental impact, including a Sciencestudy from March 1973 that discussed increases in outdoor illumination and the resultant impact on astronomy. A June 2016 Science Advancesstudy by Fabio Falchi et al. presented a world atlas of artificial sky luminance that quantified the magnitude of artificial skyglow globally. In a November 2017 study also published in Science Advances, Kyba et al. used satellite data to show the expansion of Earth’s artificially lit outdoor surface area. Other recent studies have demonstrated the environmental risks associated with artificial lighting, including an August 2021 Science Advancesstudy that demonstrated the detrimental impacts of street lighting on local insect populations and a September 2022 Science Advancesstudy that highlighted the harmful effects of nighttime lighting to ecosystems across Europe.
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