Hopefully, by the time of our meeting this month, the telescope will again be repaired and capable for the next 10 years of its anticipated lifetime. Our guest speakers participated in an open forum on light pollution. By January all of existing mercury vapor street lights in the town will have been replaced with more efficient full cutoff high-pressure sodium vapor lights. Paul Lutkevich, a professional lighting engineer, talked about sports lighting and lights with internal and external louvers being promoted for sports fields. He explained that they are not always functional and do not always meet the claims made for them as being able to eliminate light pollution.
Light can bounce or reflect off of ground surfaces and cause glare and scatter as well.
The typical flat shoebox shaped cutoff fixture is often misinstalled and is tipped, allowing light trespass. In most cases a full cutoff fixture should be installed higher since the eye adjusts to whatever the brightest thing is in the field of view. We learned that all of the lighting to be installed for the Big Dig will be full cutoff. He informed us that telephoning legislators is more effective than writing letters or sending email messages. Bob Crelin of Branford, CT amused us by saying that the more he researched, the more he was able to understand about lighting and how it works, the more he realized that it made no sense.