Published:
Jan 20, 2023 03:04 GMT
The night sky has gotten 9.6% brighter each year from 2011 to 2022, the researchers say.
While it’s no secret that big cities are not ideal places for stargazing, a new study, published in the journal Sciencewarns that the low visibility of these luminous stars is already a global problem that intensifies year after year.
This trend is due, more than anything, to light pollution from the high concentration of artificial lighting at night. The authors of the study calculated that from 2011 to 2022 the night sky has grown 9.6% brighter each year, making it impossible to see much of the stars with the naked eye.
However, these conclusions have a serious limitation, since most of the 51,351 observations reported by “citizen scientists” – who can be anyone – were made from the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea.
The authors of the study themselves acknowledge that “spatial bias“. 50.6% of the observations for the entire Asian region come from Japan, while in Australia the data were obtained mainly from coastal areas, where the largest cities are concentrated.
Judging by a map published in the study, which shows the number of observations per 100,000 square kilometers, the stars would still be perfectly visible from practically all of Latin America, and even more so from Russia or any point in Africa.
