CREEDE HINSHAW: Missing a celestial light show

Growing up in central Indiana you could still see the stars. Surrounded by corn, soybean and wheat fields my brother and I would throw our sleeping bags in our back yard beneath the rich expanse of the Milky Way stretching across the sky, occasional satellites silently orbiting our planet and unpredictable shooting stars, as we called them, highlighting the evening.

Covered securely by that nighttime sky we would have understood the psalmist (Psalm 8) describing the work of God the Creator:

You have set your glory above the heavens …

When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers,

The moon and stars that you have established …

It never occurred to us that the star-spangled heavens would rarely be available to us as adults.

Today there is too much light: on the street corner, inside and outside of office buildings, at military installations, shopping malls, airports, billboards, highways, in most back yards and porches.

The International Dark-Sky Association — they have an excellent website — reports that 80 percent of Americans live where they can no longer see the Milky Way. What a tragedy that we can no longer be awed and humbled by this work of God’s hand.

Such diminishment of the starry sky was brought home to me last week when I ventured outside to admire the dramatic Perseid Meteor Shower, that spectacular annual event when the dusty debris of an ancient comet plunges in fiery daggers across the curtain of earth’s dark atmosphere.

Astronomers promised that this year’s shower would be twice as spectacular as usual, a display not to occur in such splendor for another dozen years. A quick calculation suggested that my body itself might be on the verge of flaming out by then, so I groped my way to my side yard in the 2 a.m. darkness and fumbled to find the lawn chair from which I had a perfect view of the meteors.

Shading my eyes from two neighbors’ security lights, I gawked for 15 minutes at the cloudless sky, a latter-day magus seeking signs of flaming celestial dust. But the blackness wasn’t black. Orion’s belt held up an invisible man and the Big Dipper was only half there. My reward was a sore neck and one very fine shooting star.

The next day I found the Dark-Sky Association website, hoping to find solace and help on how to rally public support for our endangered nighttime sky. Many fine recommendations are present.

But what most stirred me were the recommendations about mitigating the light on my own property. I’m part of the problem! I have the wrong kind of security lights and lamp posts. Other equally effective bulbs and globes would do the trick while cutting down on offensive light pollution.

I visited the website to learn how to change other people’s minds and decisions. Instead, I’ll have to start in my own backyard in hopes that one day the majesty of the nighttime sky can bring us to that same point of humility understood in Psalm 8: “…what are human beings, that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].