Night skies get nearly 10% brighter each year as light pollution ‘erasing’ stars from view

The Globe at Night team launched the reporting page as an online app back in 2011, just as LEDs began to be widely adopted.

In a recently published study, the researchers took a look back at the data collected since, first filtering out potentially unreliable reports such as those collected during twilight, when the Moon was out, or when the sky was obscured by cloud.

This left them still with a whopping 51,000 data points, mostly recorded across Europe and North America.

The team found that, on average, the night sky got 9.6 percent brighter every year — meaning that, for many, the night sky now appears twice as bright as it did just eight years ago.

As Prof. Impey and Dr Walker note: “If this trend continues, a child born today in a place where 250 stars are visible now would only be able to see 100 stars on their 18th birthday.”

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1739618/night-skies-nearly-10-percent-brighter-each-year-light-pollution-citizen-science