Evansville Press, 10-28-98

If you live in the city, you probably notice one thing about the night sky-it's dark, featureless. but if you live outside the city, or at least venture to the outskirts, the night sky brightens and opens up entirely new vistas.

The dulling of the city skies is a growing problem, but one that Mitch Luman says can be improved.

Luman, the director of the science center and planetarium at the Evansville Museum, is a member of the Indiana Council on Outdoor Lighting Education (ICOLE). He also is an avid sky watcher.

He says that in the last five years he has noticed a drastic decrease in the sky's visibility at night.

"It's sad but a lot of adults have never seen the sky the way it's supposed to be seen," Luman said. "The stars have been take away from people --- they have been stolen."

The biggest night-stealing culprits are bright street lights, illuminated all-night stores and billboards that shine from sunset to sunrise with no one to see them. He classified the over-illumination of homes as "small potatoes" but said that residential lighting still could be improved.

Luman advocates using light more intelligently. That doesn't mean turning off every light in the city, but he ways that most people have never been educated on proper outdoor lighting.

The result of this lack of knowledge, he says, is light that is wasted, essentially shining up into space where it serves us no purpose.

"Light shining up is wasted," Luman said. "It's equivalent to 12 million tons of coal wasted every year and $2 billion in wasted energy."

He said that if light is used properly, it shines only when needed, doesn't shine where it shouldn't, doesn't shine in your eyes and is energy efficient.

"If you redirect, you get more (usable) light for free --- and then you wouldn't need so many lights."

The initial cost of using redirected lighting, whether for the home or for the city, is more expensive than traditional lighting (due to the cost of the equipment) but is a big cost-saver in the long run, Luman said.

He cited San Diego as a city that implemented a light-redirection program and saw a 50 percent reduction in the number of lights needed to illuminate the same area.

In tandem with redirected lighting, Luman also advocates using motion sensor lights so energy (and money) isn't wasted on light that isn't needed. He says that if cities were to make the switch to redirected lighting, the urban night sky would regain its features and the stars would be unmasked.

Luman said that he isn't concerned with having regulations implemented; but rather, he is promoting a long-term strategy of using improved outdoor lighting for new installations and for replacement of lights that have burned out.

For a discussion on urban night skies and for more information on improving outdoor lighting, Luman will be giving a presentation at 8 p.m. tonight at the nature center at Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve. Part of the preserve's Naturalist Notebook Series, the event is free and open to the public.