RE: East City Path Lights

["Shahab Mesbah" <meteor2@moscow.com>]

Dear friends,

I agree 100% with all of this. I am an astronomer and nothing annoys me more
than bright artificial lights. This is why I suggest that we have a building
code on the size and the type of light allowed outside. I do not want to see
glaring bright lights either... on the other hand you are not going to
convince everyone to not have lights on (I have tried!) so what we need here
is a solution everyone can live with. I think that solution is to limit
fixtures so they cannot throw the light beyond the property line by limiting
the type of fixture and the size of the bulb. Those of us wanting darkness
will have less to complain about... so will those who want light. We can
have smaller dimmer lights more often so we will not have dark places in the
park.

Your brother in arms,

Shahab...

Shahab Mesbah
Technical Director
Meteor Light Labs
Voice (208) 883-9765
Fax (208) 883-2678
www.meteorlabs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc [mailto:cram3813@uidaho.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 1:17 AM
To: vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: Re: East City Path Lights

I figure if you don't think it is safe walking through an unlit park at
night, then common sense would tell you not to do it.

I like darkness.  In my neighborhood, I never need to turn on my house
light because all the everyone else is running megawatt lights on the sides
of their houses.  And it's only getting worse!  Two buildings down the
3-unit condo put up a street light for their parking lot.  With a little
snow on the ground, I can leave my drapes open and see just fine inside at
night.  My neighbor may as well have a spotlight shining in his window at
night.

Personally, I think there are too many lights in town as it is.  Do we
really need *all* of those street lights along the Pullman highway?  Now,
you can safely drive that road without your headlights on.  Once the snow
melts, I invite everyone here to drive up to the lookout on the east end of
Moscow Mountain and look down at Moscow one evening.  It is easy to pick
out many places from the light:  the glaring lights of the mall, the big
red Safeway sign, the uniquely green sign for Tidyman's, the really, really
bright lights of the car dealerships, and many others.

And, for the viewers' viewing pleasure (or displeasure), I have posted a
picture.  It is a composite of the US at night taken from orbit.  It shows
the light that is visible from up there.  There is also a link to the same
thing with absurd resolution if you want to download it and really zoom in.
 You can easily pick out the coast, the major (and some minor) roads and
many rivers just from the light pollution patterns.  It is never night in
New Jersey or on Long Island or Cape Cod.  It is alarming how scared of the
dark we are as a society.

The address for that site is:
http://www.uidaho.edu/~cram3813/NightLight.html

Back to my dark cave I go,

Marc