Light Pollution
This picture was taken at midnight in Mendocino County, about halfway between Boonville and Point Arena. The location is 55 miles (90 km) away from Santa Rosa, 100 miles (160 km) away from San Francisco and Oakland, and 110 miles (180 km) away from Sacramento, but the sky above those cities glows so bright that it makes the Milky Way difficult to see and noticeably lights up the landscape even here.
The amount and far reach of the light produced by modern cities is astonishing, considering the amount of electrical power required to illuminate the landscape and the sky within a radius of more than a hundred miles. Until recently certain lens filters were able to reduce the visibility of the sky glow in nighttime photos, but when cities switched street lighting from sodium vapor lamps to LEDs those filters stopped working.
Light Pollution
This picture was taken at midnight in Mendocino County, about halfway between Boonville and Point Arena. The location is 55 miles (90 km) away from Santa Rosa, 100 miles (160 km) away from San Francisco and Oakland, and 110 miles (180 km) away from Sacramento, but the sky above those cities glows so bright that it makes the Milky Way difficult to see and noticeably lights up the landscape even here.
The amount and far reach of the light produced by modern cities is astonishing, considering the amount of electrical power required to illuminate the landscape and the sky within a radius of more than a hundred miles. Until recently certain lens filters were able to reduce the visibility of the sky glow in nighttime photos, but when cities switched street lighting from sodium vapor lamps to LEDs those filters stopped working.