Sign of the times - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pm
content: As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like.It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2021, 09:40:10 pm
content: Very true. The whiter light from LEDs is also bad for wildlife and astronomy.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2021, 10:46:18 pm
content: The "ECO" nuts have screwed society with their agendas. I don't mean that renewable energy is not great, I mean that the OBSESSION with LED everything is a political ego massage.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2021, 11:01:07 pm
content: Gotta say that brighter, whiter, longer-lasting lights with rechargable batteries that pack a huge punch and don't self-discharge certainly has me railing against the eco-freaks.Er... or perhaps not

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2021, 11:12:09 pm
content: I still remember when it went from white mercury vapor lights to orange high pressure sodium in the early-mid 80s. I never did like high pressure sodium, in my opinion they should have just stayed with mercury. HPS is more efficient on paper but I never thought the ugly orange light worked very well to actually light things up, it just sprayed glare everywhere and the scene looked dull and dark. The green spectral line in a mercury discharge makes vegetation glow.Low pressure sodium is monochromatic and is useful for astronomy but HPS is sufficiently broadband that filtering it isn't really much easier than white light, it just makes everything look icky and orange.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 01:02:23 am
content: I like LED lighting. Sodium vapour lamps were just awful in terms of colour.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 02:06:41 am
content: The orange glow from low pressure neon lighting is a godsend when eating a donner kebab late at night while walking down the street. I was shocked the first time I ever saw one in colour.On a separate note, my town recently took the local electric company to task for installing brighter, colder streetlights. They made them replace them free of charge.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 02:42:07 am
content: olde fuddy-duddies remember mercury blue streetlighting, and fuddy-duddies remember sodium halide.Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project25,320 cobra heads replaced as crapola Leotek which did not last "premature burning out".$3.9M worth of LED units, $5.2M installation and then a lawsuit over it all. I'll bet sodium would've been much cheaper lol.LED streetlighting has an anemic dim glow, dark splotches on the road, fake specs leaving civil engineers thinking they can light up more with less.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 02:54:21 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on May 14, 2021, 02:42:07 amYup...Too bad the LUXIM plasma light (LEP) was never wide adopted as a standard and failed, though more expensive, they visually look better with near perfect CRI, double the efficiency of LEDs and since you aren't over-driving cheap Chinese leds, they last a lot longer.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 07:57:22 am
content: Quote from: eti on May 13, 2021, 10:46:18 pmIt all comes down to saving money. If they can save electricity and the lamps don't have to be replaced so often, fewer people need to be employed to maintain them.It's easy to fix though. In areas where it's a problem, just use yellow LEDs, with a narrowband spectrum.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 08:36:14 am
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pmBack in the day, in Oz, the glow was always white from colour corrected mercury vapour lamps, & some incandescents, then those godawful sodium crap things took over.They were still very rare in Western Australia when I went to the UK in 1971, but all over the place there.The rule for cars driving in town had just changed to "dipped beams", but very few Brit drivers did that, driving around on their parking lights, instead, as they had for decades.If a car had no yellow in its paint colour, it was pretty much invisible.The same was the case for people's clothes, from the driver's point of view.I nearly got knocked over by a dark blue "invisible taxi" on one occasion, on a zebra crossing!On my return home, I noticed that the scourge of sodium had started to take over, there, too!On another trip to the UK, in 1974" I parked my pink Ford Cortina hire car in a smallish car park, & went to visit some people.On my return, after dark, I couldn't find a pink Cortina, but there was ayellowone!Not really that much of a hassle, as the key ring had the Reg number on it, but it had me going for a while.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 10:22:01 am
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pmWhat does that make those of us who remember the bug-light yellow glow from low pressure sodium lamps?

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 11:31:08 am
content: boring olde phartes?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 07:04:39 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on May 14, 2021, 02:42:07 amGood quality LED streetlighting produces nice quality light with good optical control and long life. The problem is not LED streetlighting, the problem is CHEAP crappy luminaires that don't meet specs and don't live up to quoted lifespans. Leotek is cheap crap, this is like buying the cheapest LED bulb you can find at the dollar store and complaining that LED bulbs are no good based on it. If you buy a good quality product you stand a good chance of getting good results. If you buy the cheapest thing you can find, well, sometimes you get what you pay for.LED is the future of lighting though, development has virtually ceased on all other lighting technologies. A friend of mine who works in the industry went to a lighting industry trade show about 10 years ago and said that absolutely everything on the floor was LED, it was like nothing else existed. Previously there was fluorescent, electrodeless induction, and various HID technologies but all of that was gone. It isn't too surprising though, LED can provide longer life with less maintenance, better lumen maintenance, less color shift, better uniformity between luminaires, shorter (as in none) warmup time to full brightness, instant restrike after a power failure, more color options, better optical control and many other advantages. That doesn't mean there isn't garbage on the market, but superior products do exist.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 07:13:12 pm
content: http://drbulb.com/leds-in-hollywood

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 07:30:12 pm
content: It's funny to hear about nostalgia for high pressure sodium, I guess it's younger folks who don't remember the nice clean white light we had before those awful orange things replaced everything in the name of energy efficiency. Now we're back to nice clean white light, in the name of even better energy efficiency. I hated HPS when they initially took over and I don't miss them one bit now that they're going away.They will change the light sources in particular scenes for filming movies, I remember seeing color correcting gels wrapped around streetlights in Los Angeles a few times when I was there, left over from filming scenes. If a director wants to capture the HPS look digitally filtering the footage is now an option too.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 07:49:43 pm
content: Oh holy crap this one annoyed me. They replaced all our gentle orange sodium lights with LEDs a few years back. I had to change the curtains in the end for blackout ones because it’s like having prison arc searchlights chasing you at night otherwise.But a year down the line I don’t even notice any more

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 08:28:04 pm
content: One of my earlier memories is lying on the back seat of an Austin A30, feeling horribly travel sick, watching the orange low pressure Sodium lamps drift by.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 08:31:04 pm
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 14, 2021, 11:31:08 amQuote from: james_s on May 14, 2021, 07:30:12 pmI recall reading an article that highway/street lights in white is easier for older people to see. I can't find that article anymore.But, it makes sense -- white comprises of the entire visible color spectrum. Anyone with decreased sensitivity to any particular color can have the rest of the color spectrum to rely on.The most common color blindness is red-green (8% of male, 0.5% female for Northern European descent according to Wikipedia), next to that is blue-yellow. Yellow, orange, amber are colors are a mix of red and green, so it is unfriendly to decreased sensitivity to red-green. The traffic light colors are even less friendly to them, yet red-green insensitivity appears to be the most common.It may not make any difference to most of us, but I guess only until someone runs over your dog because the street is lid with yellowish lamps.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 08:33:46 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on May 14, 2021, 08:28:04 pmReading that instantly triggered a similar memory here. Drifting off watching the old green but slightly blue traffic lights pass by from the back of my father’s Ford cortina that smelled of vomit after my sister had eaten too many fruit pastels and let them go

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 08:51:33 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on May 14, 2021, 08:31:04 pmThere's also a difference in sensitivity between photopic and scotopic vision, more bluish wavelengths have an advantage at low light levels. I think the real issue though is that so many things absorb orange light which leads to the effect of a bright source spraying light everywhere but the scene is not really lit up very well. The source itself looks very bright due to orange being close to the sensitivity peak of the eye but that just serves to drown out all the orange absorbing objects in the scene and produce a bunch of glare. There has also been a tendency to over-light, high light levels do not improve visibility over more modest levels, they just create contrast between brighter and darker areas. Modern regulations requiring full-cutoff luminaires that do not emit any light above 90 degrees also create a problem of needing more of them to create even illumination and even then you end up with bright pools under the source with dark spaces between. IMO they could achieve more effective lighting while still mitigating light pollution by using lower intensity sources and focus on providing even illumination. Less total light but more of it doing something useful.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 09:12:00 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 14, 2021, 07:49:43 pmThe worst is cycling in the evening. Everyone has the landing lights of an airport strapped to their handlebars and pointed straight ahead.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2021, 09:36:13 pm
content: Yeah that's a massive problem in London as a driver. While I certainly respect cyclists (as a former cyclist) it really annoys the hell out of my when someone comes flying at me on the opposite side of the road with a frigging strobe light going on. I can see you fine if it doesn't flash.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 03:53:20 am
content: Quote from: james_s on May 14, 2021, 07:30:12 pmWell I'm 35 and at least were I lived most of my life in Portugal I saw both, the High Pressure Sodium that leave that glow in Orange, the Mercury Vapour ones with their white spectrum and now the LED. And there is still places where in the same road you find the 3 types. I hate the HPS in terms of colour but the reality is that I have the impression when driving that it illuminates the street better than the Mercury Vapour, thanks to the light spill.LED if it is a good one is something out of the world, beating the light spill perception (or reality) of HPS and having the white glow of the Mercury Vapour ones.Here in Shenzhen where I'm currently living, the street behind my house is all HPS Yellow/Orange and the main street LED White and the LED beat in terms of illumination and pleasing to the eyes.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 06:21:21 am
content: It's certainly going to depend on where you are. Here in the USA mercury vapor absolutely dominated street lighting from about the late 1950s up into the early 1980s. Some areas used clear lamps and others used phosphor coated color corrected lamps, some seemed to use whatever they had on hand at the time. LPS (SOX) that was extremely common in the UK and Europe never really caught on here, there were pockets of them in a few specific areas, particularly in the vicinity of observatories but I've never seen one on a public road up here in the Northwest. HPS started to appear sometime in the 70s and the changeover really picked up steam in the early 80s until it had absolutely dominated everywhere. Metal halide was widely used in parking lots and interior lighting of large stores and warehouses from the 80s on but it was never widely used in streetlighting. There may still be pockets of mercury streetlights in some areas, there were still thousands of incandescent streetlights from the 1920s-50s in the Los Angeles area and a few other places as recently as about 5 years ago when the last company stopped making the special 6.6A series lamps. I'm sure pockets of HPS will be around for decades more until the supply of replacement lamps dries up.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 06:36:39 am
content: Quote from: Gyro on May 14, 2021, 08:28:04 pmI have similar memories and thinking about it now, in order of time they went from largely low pressure sodium, to high pressure sodium, to mercury.Quote from: james_s on May 15, 2021, 06:21:21 amI think it varied a lot between urban, suburban, and rural areas. LPS was common in rural California where I was born but I never saw them in any large suburban or urban areas. The small towns in the 1970s still had a lot of them.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 06:40:51 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on May 15, 2021, 06:36:39 amI think it was a California thing. I could swear I saw a few LPS remaining in San Diego I think it was as recently as about 10 years ago. Seems like I heard they were common in Arizona too, or maybe it was New Mexico, I don't even recall now. Up here in my corner I never saw them on public roads anywhere, ever. Rural and urban areas alike went from mercury vapor to HPS and over the past 10 years have been shifting to LED.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 08:56:35 am
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on May 14, 2021, 08:36:14 amMight have been pink elephants that were involved?

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 10:58:53 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 14, 2021, 09:36:13 pmThe slow flashing ones are quite dangerous as the only light (and not generally lawful in the UK*). I remember pulling out of a junction having looked right-left-right and nearly hit a cyclist coming from the right whose light was off both times I looked in his direction. It must have been around 1-2 Hz. When I cycle I never use the flashing modes for this reason.Coming back to streetlighting. Around here (Southampton UK) it was mostly LPS, with occasional HPS on major roads until maybe 5 years ago. Now residential areas are mostly fluorescent (!?) and dim or turn off from 1 am, most of the major roads are LED with some HPS left at big junctions.Quote from: james_s on May 14, 2021, 08:51:33 pmThe problem is retrofitting full-cut-off without changing anything else like pole heights or spacings. It's cheaper but you get this effect.I can remember sections of the M25 having LPS on catenaries up the central reservation, like thishttp://imagizer.imageshack.com/a/img922/9831/kq2AUC.jpgI seem to remember the light was fairly even, but it's all gone now in favour of conventional poles. Perhaps maintenance is just easier/cheaper. Not all UK motorways have lighting, mostly the larger, busier ones and around junctions.*You are allowed to use a light that flashes if it is CE marked and has no other modes. From memory though this is to meet the requirement to have lights, once you have a light that meets this you may be able to add additional lights of any type, not sure.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 11:36:10 am
content: Quote from: james_s on May 14, 2021, 08:51:33 pmMost colour blind people don't have reduced sensitivity to red or green light, because they have the same number of red and green cones as everyone else. The difference is their red, or green, cones are a slightly different colour, than normal, which makes their colour perception different.Is there anyone here old enough to remember gas street lights? My father is in his mid 70s and remembers seeing someone going round lighting the gas lamps every night, when he was a child.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 12:40:21 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on May 15, 2021, 08:56:35 amNah!The friends I referred to had a fish n' chips shop, & I visited them at work.Nothing harder than coca-cola there, the "Red Lion" up the road had been knocked down, &, on general principle, I wasn't going to the pub in the railway station car park, that looked like a re-purposed toilet block!Besides, the pink elephants would have looked like yellow elephants.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 12:49:17 pm
content: Quote from: richard.cs on May 15, 2021, 10:58:53 amSOTON was where I had my "yellow Cortina" experience.I'm not sure of your vintage, but you might remember the "Golden Chippy", up the road from the railway station.That was the one my friends ran.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 01:28:59 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 15, 2021, 06:40:51 amLPS may have been used in San Diego county because Palomar Observatory is near. There were no observatories where I was. I am sure what I saw was legacy installations which were eventually replaced with HPS and Mercury Vapor.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 02:02:48 pm
content: I can't complain. A few years ago the street lights in my little town (rural area) were changed to LED and we have more lumen consuming much less power. Also the light footprint has improved, i.e. less dark spots between light posts. No idea of vendor and model, presumably the better ones. Regarding insects, the impact of the LED street lights doesn't seem to be larger than the old ones. Might coincide with the decline in insect populations.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 11:58:53 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on May 15, 2021, 11:36:10 amMy friend visited Germany in I think 2010 and took a few pictures of some gas streetlighting that was still in use. I don't know exactly where they were but they resembled cobrahead style luminairs but with a row of gas mantles instead of a lamp in them.

author: RichC
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 12:59:56 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on May 14, 2021, 08:31:04 pmSodium lamps are not a mix of red and green, they are a pure yellow (sodium lights have probably the narrowest frequency band of any lights in fact).Also as mentioned colour blindness is about being unable to tell colours apart not being unable to see them at all.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 04:55:24 pm
content: Quote from: RichC on May 16, 2021, 12:59:56 pmRemember that there are two types of "sodium lamps", low pressure sodium and high pressure sodium. The low pressure sodium lamps produce an extremely narrow band monochromatic yellow light, they have been very common in Europe and UK but are extremely rare in North America, they just never really caught on here at all.http://lamptech.co.uk/Spec%20Sheets/D%20SLP%20GEC%20SOX90.htmHigh pressure sodium lamps produce an orange colored light but it is fairly broadband, this is what almost anyone in this part of the world will think of if they hear "sodium lights".http://lamptech.co.uk/Spec%20Sheets/D%20SHP%20Sylvania%20LU200.htm

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 05:49:07 pm
content: Good riddance.LED streetlights are superior in almost every imaginable way, including the fact you see so much better with the same number of lumens.Plus, you clearly are young and only pretending to be old and grumpy. The orange glow era was short. Before that, the dim cold white mercury vapor lighting was the norm.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 06:14:34 pm
content: I don't think LED lighting itself is bad, but I don't get why they could not stick to orange/yellow for street lights as it's less harsh as far as making light pollution, and also keep the glass diffusers in place. The orange light still lit up the streets without being harsh, and the diffusers made the light more spread out instead of lot of harsh spots.My city switched to LED years back and one thing I find is the light is more directional due to lack of diffusers so it's well lit under the street light but the spaces between are not lit as well. The white light is brighter though, so there's that, but I don't think the purpose of street lights should be to try to make it super bright, but rather brighten up the area slightly enough to see.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 06:24:42 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on May 16, 2021, 06:14:34 pmThe orange light was a bug, not a feature. It was something people lived with in order to get the high efficiency offered by a sodium discharge, it was never considered desirable and nobody thought it was an improvement over the nice white mercury vapor light we had before the switch to sodium. If the white light looks harsh it's probably because it's too bright. That awful orange light never really lit anything up properly so they used a LOT of light, and the LED replacements were sized to provide similar lumen output when in most cases they should have dropped it down a notch. The orange HPS light also does nothing to reduce light pollution, it's not monochromatic like LPS, and it's the monochromatic light that helps reduce light pollution because it can be easily filtered out.The diffusers went away because of legislation meant to reduce light pollution by requiring FCO luminaires that do not emit any light at all above 90 degrees. This brings the unintended consequences of uneven lighting, hot spots and glare. IMO a better solution to light pollution would be to reduce the total amount of light emitted and try to have it as even as possible.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 06:38:57 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 15, 2021, 11:58:53 pmI've read somewhere, there are still a few in London, preserved for posterity's sake, but when my father was a child, gaslighting was still widespread, in Warrington, Northwest England, near Manchester and Liverpool. Back then nasty coal gas, a flammable toxic mixture of carbon-monoxide, hydrogen and methane was use to light the streets, as well as piped into homes.

author: penfold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 06:55:51 pm
content: The one complaint I have with the LEDs is that without the diffusers, (living in a particularly hilly city) when driving up-hill they do appear quite dazzling and the more distant ones can be difficult to distinguish from an oncoming headlamp at first glance especially when there's a reflection from a window.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 07:13:46 pm
content: QuoteWhen our lane was converted, I found myself squinting when between posts because of the dazzle. Now I don't notice, not sure why.I think I am generally in favour of the white LEDs, but one thing I miss from the HPS is that you knew it was night time! Sounds daft, but then a big thing is made about monitors and phones dropping the blue at night (I disable all that stuff). Perhaps that's a hangover from years of sodium and incandescent interior lights - I notice that my preferred colour temperature for LED lighting has crept up since most of out fittings have been changed.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 07:23:46 pm
content: Quote from: RichC on May 16, 2021, 12:59:56 pmI understand that color blindness is merely unable to distinct the colors. None the less, it does mean a degraded vision.When you have two cars or of similar color, it is hard to make it out as two in low light. Not being able to distinct 1/3 of the color, it may that distinction even harder. It would be like: "That car split itself into two and one went straight and the other one hit me..."

author: penfold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2021, 07:39:28 pm
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 16, 2021, 07:13:46 pmYou know what? I was thinking the exact same thing to myself. The first thought was that it was never a particular "problem" just a noticeable difference I just got used to or gradually adjusted my eye movement to avoid them and changed how I scan a road a when turning into a junction, I'm happy to believe its a perception issue rather than technical.Driving in fog was a very noticeable difference especially where the orange made a useful contrast from the white or red of a car.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2021, 07:25:57 pm
content: Quote from: penfold on May 16, 2021, 06:55:51 pmI live on a big hill and this still annoys me, I have gotten in the habit of looking away from where I know the streetlights are as I drive up the hill. Also a couple of trees have grown considerably since the LEDs were installed and that mitigates the glare too. The glare is a consequence of the FCO mandate and excessive light levels due to lumen standards that were created assuming HPS.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 12:14:36 am
content: I think the diffusers would actually REDUCE light pollution by making it more even instead of causing bright spots.If you look at this long exposure for example you can see how the houses near the lights are very bright compared to ones not directly under, I guess it's hard to compare as I don't have a similar pic with the orange lights but I feel with a diffuser the lighting would be a bit more evened out. Those bright spots are more visible from the air as well and the light reflects back upwards as the street also has a very bright white spot directly below the light. The orange light was a bit more subtle and also less hard on the eyes.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 02:20:41 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on May 16, 2021, 07:23:46 pmNo it does not mean degraded vision, it's just more difficult to distinguish between some colours. Quite often it's very mild, in which case the person only struggles with unsaturated colours, in poor light.QuoteThat's true for everyone, even more for those who are colourblind.QuoteWhat do you mean? You do realise that most people who are colourblind have as many colour receptors, as those with normal colour vision. They're just the wrong colour, which skews their colour vision slightly. It doesn't reduce their sensitivity to light.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 05:22:48 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on May 18, 2021, 12:14:36 amI agree, more even lighting would allow the use of less light to achieve the same result. The law says no light emitted above 90 degrees though which effectively bans drop-lens diffusers, and like many laws, it was based on good intentions but brings unintended consequences.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 05:26:58 pm
content: Why do we feel the need to light up everything at night? We're doing irreparable harm to many animal species that evolved in dark night skies. Human hubris at work...

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 05:45:58 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 18, 2021, 05:22:48 pmIt's perfectly possible to make optics with a sharp cutoff just below 90 degrees and which gives good, even illumination. Optimally the beam pattern should give less light per unit angle straight down and progressively more light per unit angle near to the cutoff. This ensures that the light per length of road is roughly constant.Such fittings exist, and work well, but there is an optimal pole height and spacing for them. Retrofitting them onto existing poles designed for lights with a different pattern often gives crappy results.* The optical design is easier (cheaper, more compact, etc.) with taller and/or closely-spaced poles because the cutoff angle can be lower, and the brightness ratio between the centre and the edges less.* But is very common. Adding new poles to reduce the spacing is expensive as you have to dig up lots of cables, etc. Changing the poles, generally to taller ones, is cheaper but still much more than just slapping a new fitting on the end. In the UK there are plenty of 1930s and earlier light poles with modern fittings on top**, and often the resulting light pattern is pretty poor.** e.g.https://goo.gl/maps/SH7Tcoy2PRnfy5888

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 05:52:00 pm
content: Yeah, it would be nice to get more use out of my telescope.Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 18, 2021, 05:26:58 pm

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2021, 05:55:04 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 18, 2021, 05:26:58 pmBecause people like it, it makes them feel safer, it looks nice, it does make driving significantly safer, it eliminates many of the dark places where crime festers. I do think we could do with much less of it though, generally speaking light levels are much higher than they need to be, and at least in residential neighborhoods like mine the lights are spaced far too far apart to be of any real use. Street lighting could be 1/4 or even less lumens than is typically used and it would still accomplish the goals. That and motion detectors that turn on lights or make them brighter only when there is somebody in the area that is being lit up.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 03:44:18 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 18, 2021, 05:26:58 pmThat's a good point too, I get that there is a safety aspect, but people survived fine before lights. We need to stop bubble wrapping society.I think a good compromise would be occupancy sensors, roads/area that have no activity the lights would turn off and only come on (slowly dim and not sudden on) if they detect activity. Not really sure what the best way of doing that would be though, simple infrared sensors would trigger every time a bear or large dog passes by, lasers that are higher than a bear on 4 legs could work but pose a risk to eyes.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pm
content: I ain't gainsaying you, but this kind of thing doesn't help your cause:QuotePeople survived fine before cars.People survived fine before mobile phones.People survived fine before landline phones.People survived fine before post.People survived fine before concrete....The are LOTS of things people survived fine before. Some of them are actually useful and/or made life better. The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 04:53:53 pm
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pmSo what do we say to nocturnal animals that depend on darkness to hunt (or avoid predators)? Fuck you, my need to party till dawn overrides your need to live?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 06:02:49 pm
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pmBut all of the above mostly improve health and over all quality of life. Having too much light at night time, especially the shorter wavelengths is unhealthy and disrupts sleep. I have dark brown curtains and another later of black cloth sewn behind them to block out most of the light at night time.Streets should be minimally lit, preferably with a low colour temperature to avoid disrupting sleep.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 06:17:12 pm
content: QuoteSay whatever you want, but don't plonk your assumptions on me - I didn't express one way or the other whether doing that stuff is good, bad or ugly, just noted the fact that light is the enabler.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 07:03:16 pm
content: Funny thing is the mercury vapour lamp, before they went to the rubbish low mercury stuff, was pretty much the nearly everlasting lamp, in that in a street lighting application you could simply do a group relamp every 10 years, and in the interim you might have 5-10% of the lamps fail over that period, with the majority still providing around 70% of the light output after the 10 years had passed. You find plenty of 125W MV lamps still in residential use in the USA, on dusk to dawn, and probably still there since the 1980's, providing light to old buildings all over the USA, and not likely to be changed out till they fail. With the original GE or Westinghouse lamp in them, which stayed basicaly the same since the late 1960's when they had figured out how to make a robust lamp, and before the MBA take over which wanted a 5 year life in them, so they cut the area of emitter, cut the arc tube length and cu the mercury dose down.In street light use it is easy to recycle, you have enough lamps, enough volume all at once, and the crews going out with the right packaging to protect the removed lamps as they replace them, and a box as well. Easy to simply get them, crush and sort into the glass, wash off the phosphor for reuse, wash out the mercury with the phosphor, separate the metals, and do 3 melts to separate out the lead solder, the steel wire and finally sinter the tungsten back into wire.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 07:40:09 pm
content: 125W mercury is not a size we had in the USA other than a few cheap imported lights near the end of the mercury era. The classic mercury yard light/barn light used a 175W lamp and the good ones did indeed last a very long time. My grandfather installed one in the late 70s and it ran dusk till dawn and was still working on the original lamp when we sold the house in 2016 after my grandmother passed away. Close to 40 years on the same lamp, and it still looked as bright as a new one. I never climbed up and looked closely at the lamp but I suspect it was one of the GE Bonus Line lamps that used an electrode formulation resulting in white deposits rather than blackening the arc tube.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 07:51:45 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust link=topic=282439.msg3569147#msg3569147Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project25,320 cobra heads replaced[/quote

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 07:55:50 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on May 19, 2021, 07:51:45 pmThere's probably more to the story. I can only speculate, but my guess is they're replacing complete installations in a lot of areas, ripping up deteriorated underground wiring, replacing damaged poles, replacing sidewalks and pavement torn up in the process, these sorts of projects are always expensive. In an old city like Detroit it may not be as simple as just going down the street swapping out luminaires. It's possible that Detroit still has some 6.6A series loops like Los Angeles, they've been doing some very expensive retrofit work there to replace many of the deteriorating series loops that were installed from the 1920s up through the 1960s.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 09:43:25 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on May 19, 2021, 03:44:18 pmQuotehttps://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/us/philadelphia-skyline-dimming-birds-collision/index.html

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 09:53:51 pm
content: It seems to me that considering howzealoussome of the Federal agencies are about protecting any kind of endangered or "of special concern" species, that if even one of those were killed in this event, that the USG would immediately shutdown all of the street lights, outdoor advertising, bill boards, and and all of the extremely well lit night time activities and every other source of light pollution in Philadelphia.I remember when a major dam project in Tennessee was abandoned in the 1970s after they found some sort of rare snail that no one knew existed and decided that it needed to be protectedat all costsunder the Endangered Species Act.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 11:06:43 pm
content: The gratuitous lighting that really bothers me are those insanely bright video billboards that are placed in a few spots along major highways. There's at least one a bit South of where I am that I pass by now and then which doesn't seem to have a night mode, it blazes away at full brightness 24 hours a day and at night it's blinding. IMO it's a dangerous distraction to have any sort of video screen visible from the highway, especially when it's something as pointless as advertising.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2021, 11:13:53 pm
content: I don't really care what kind of lights they use most of the time, but when there is fog the narrow orange lines of a low pressure sodium lamp really seem to cut through without creating massive glare.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 07:42:53 am
content: It may also help that low pressure sodium lamps are physically gigantic compared to other HID lamps and LEDs, so the optics are completely different and the light intensity from a given area of the source is relatively low. Despite their complete lack of color rendering they do have a very soft smooth light, generally speaking I prefer them over high pressure sodium.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 07:56:29 am
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on May 19, 2021, 09:53:51 pmThat sounds amusing, but bear in mind that if those snails died, it might be devastating to the local ecosystem. The river could become overgrown with weed and many fish who depend on the snails for food die too.Quote from: coppice on May 19, 2021, 11:13:53 pmI think longer wavelenghts scatter less in fog and being monchomatic light could also help as there aren't different wavelenghts being scattered at different amounts.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 09:29:14 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on May 19, 2021, 09:53:51 pmSometimes we forget that by all estimates, we are rare.By all estimates, life started on earth almost right after it can start, implying life is not rare. Intelligent life is a subset of all life, so we believe intelligent life is rarer than mere life. By the same logic, we believe technology-capable intelligence is even more rare.If technology-capable intelligent life is indeed as rare as we think, we are what made earth special. At least that is what current evidence is pointing. Without us, earth will be merely another planet with biologicals like plenty of other rocks floating in space are.So, I suppose, lighting up for us to be safer is not a bad thing, advertisements not withstanding.

author: penfold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2021, 09:45:25 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on May 20, 2021, 09:29:14 pmAhh, but what makes humansespeciallyinteresting is that we are one of the extraordinarily few species that go to extraordinary lengths to protect other species.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2021, 03:49:15 am
content: Quote from: penfold on May 20, 2021, 09:45:25 pmThat is where "intelligence" come in, I suppose. We use our intelligence to access what is harmful to us. With that analysis, we use our technology-intelligence to create tools to foster some species, and tools to exterminate others. We are just part of nature, and so we do what nature requires of us. Why benefits to human should come first? Without human, this planet would be adding very little to the universe at-large. There are billions of planet that can sustain life (if current thinking is right), but very few with intelligent technology capable life.I am on both sides of this light pollution issue,I used to live in the boonies. I enjoyed observing the night sky with my electronically controlled 90mm reflector. In the last 15 years or so, instead of just woods and morning smell of farm (fertilizers), it is now citified - the city moved into what was my boonies. I can't look in any direction without street lights, cars, and annoying traffic shaking the grounds (de-stabilizing my scope). My reflector scope has not been out of the box for over a decade now.Price we pay for progress. Lights, lights, and more damn lights -- but thankful I haven't yet run into my third deer in the last decade. So only two cars destroyed.Best for us to do is "do the least harm" - where it is not necessary (such as advertisement lighting), why harm more. Where is is necessary, well, may be better to blind the birds than to weep over a family of four in the car that hit the tree.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2021, 03:53:23 pm
content: Quote from: penfold on May 20, 2021, 09:45:25 pmGrains have domesticated the local tool using hominid to care for them and extend their domain. Grains rule the Earth.