Ireland at night

WolfeIRE · 15-11-2010 3:29pm #1

Beautiful pic of Ireland at night

FoxT · 15-11-2010 3:32pm

The brits are being invaded by aliens! YESSSSSSSS:D

Danbo! · 15-11-2010 3:39pm

Ill never understand how the brits got planning for those three towers.

Stevek101 · 15-11-2010 3:42pm

Or how they got permission to move the Isle of Man.

limklad · 15-11-2010 4:49pm

WolfeIRE wrote: »

Beautiful pic of Ireland at night

There plenty of Towns in the wrong place or more precisely renamed :eek:

Kilkenny has been renamed Portlaoise
Carlow has been renamed Newbridge.
Portlaoise has been renamed Tullamore,
Nenagh has been renamed Loughrea
Tullamore has been renamed Athlone
Athlone has been renamed Roscommon.
Castlebar has been renamed Ballina.
Millstreet has been renamed as Kanturk

Heathen · 15-11-2010 4:57pm

limklad wrote: »

There plenty of Towns in the wrong place or more precisely renamed :eek:

Kilkenny has been renamed Portlaoise
Carlow has been renamed Newbridge.
Portlaoise has been renamed Tullamore,
Nenagh has been renamed Loughrea
Tullamore has been renamed Athlone
Athlone has been renamed Roscommon.
Castlebar has been renamed Ballina.

South Kilkenny has been renamed to Waterford!! hahahaha

fricatus · 15-11-2010 5:08pm

Heathen wrote: »

South Kilkenny has been renamed to Waterford!! hahahaha

Proper order, since the feckers all work here!

Would be nice to see it without all the labels though. I don't really care which splodge in the Midlands is Tullamore after all...

isle of man · 15-11-2010 7:47pm

Stevek101 wrote: »

Or how they got permission to move the Isle of Man.

holy hell im welsh now :rolleyes::D

Villain · 15-11-2010 8:40pm

Without the editing for names

Iancar29 · 15-11-2010 11:21pm

Anyone know the link of this to the nasa site?

I wanna try get a high res version

lord lucan · 15-11-2010 11:25pm

Iancar29 wrote: »

Anyone know the link of this to the nasa site?

I wanna try get a high res version

Taken By Doug Wheelock onboard the ISS. He posts pics up on his twitter page,here's the aforementioned pic:http://twitpic.com/36xbzh

Iancar29 · 15-11-2010 11:28pm

Ah k cheers, would of been a nice wallpaper if it was high res.

Stevek101 · 15-11-2010 11:39pm

High res

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/193031405.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1289861757&Signature=WlMGFzz5E0%2Ba454q59w7Rv%2FZj%2B0%3D

Popoutman · 16-11-2010 12:19am

Such a pity really that we waste such an amount of energy lighting up our sky.

It's a pretty picture, but personally I find it hard to enjoy this as I'm an astronomer and the light pollution is a pain in the ass sometimes.

I'll try to clean up the image to get it a bit sharper and remove the motion blur from it, but it'll take a bit of time.

Harps · 16-11-2010 12:36am

Theres a night time thing on google earth as well, go to gallery > nasa > earth city lights

Shows the whole world at night and its got a pretty good resolution

gbee · 16-11-2010 10:39am

Popoutman wrote: »

Such a pity really that we waste such an amount of energy lighting up our sky. as I'm an astronomer and the light pollution is a pain in the ass sometimes.

Ireland must have the worst light pollution per capita by a big margin. It's rare enough to get good observing conditions but then it's ruined by light pollution, after a gap of many years, I returned a bit to astronomy this year, my heart is broken with light everywhere ~ this picture just proves my point.

A few months ago now, we had a low expectancy of observing the Aurora Borealis after a mag 3 event deep down here in the South [we really need a mag 5 event to see anything] but this mag 3 could potentially be seen very low ~

Well, as you've guessed already, not a hope ~ we traveled to Mallow for a bit of height but the light pollution was extreme ~ I can clearly see this on the picture.

Min · 16-11-2010 2:05pm

Light pollution isn't too bad where I live, it's good for astronomy.

I guess if we lived in North Korea we might enjoy some light pollution since they seem to be very environmentally friendly when it comes to leaving the lights on :pac:

Joe Public · 16-11-2010 2:11pm

Does most light pollution come from street lighting?

If so, are there better methods of providing street lighting?

Dardania · 16-11-2010 2:18pm

Joe Public wrote: »

Does most light pollution come from street lighting?

If so, are there better methods of providing street lighting?

There are better design methods of providing street lighting such as using street lights that only light downwards, and not upwards - in lighting design you assess the Upward Light Ouput Ratio

Another option is to reduce street lighting lux levels after a certian time i.e. 2 am on a tuesday night, no-one will notice if the lighting is at half lux level...

Also, once you've looked at the light source, and optimised it, then you have to consider what it is lighting - black tarmac (as spec'd for motorways) doesn't relfect much light, whereas light concrete does...

But the best way to reduce sky glow is to elimate street lights & building floodlighting altogether - not possible in a lot of places becuase of safety or security concerns...but alot of building floodlighting/advertising signage is unecessary

For now, some local authorities look to see that you comply with http://www.darksky.org

Villain · 16-11-2010 2:27pm

TBH I would say we don't have any enough street lighting, security and safety will always come ahead of light pollution in my mind, areas of Carlow lack street lighting badly especially some dangerous roads on the edge of towns.

I'm sure there are ways of using more modern lightng that will save electricity and help reduce the impact.

Popoutman · 16-11-2010 4:01pm

Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, using IRIS.

Popoutman · 16-11-2010 4:03pm

as an interesting point - brightly lit areas are more unsecure than unlit areas - it's a fallacy that more light is more secure and more safe. I'll expound more on that elsewhere.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar · 16-11-2010 4:05pm

how in the hell is newbridge more lit up than carlow? carlow isn't great, but newbridge is a bloody dive

Villain · 16-11-2010 4:08pm

Popoutman wrote: »

as an interesting point - brightly lit areas are more unsecure than unlit areas - it's a fallacy that more light is more secure and more safe. I'll expound more on that elsewhere.

I'm talking about safety in terms of RTA involving pedestrians

Popoutman · 16-11-2010 5:35pm

Villain wrote: »

I'm talking about safety in terms of RTA involving pedestrians

The best type of lighting for pedestrian safety is one that doesn't involve bright bulbs being visible to the drivers. A good example is the type of lighting at most country villages where the speed limits are at the moment, and these are at some pedestrian crossings as well. These lights are the ones with the red and white striped shrouds under the actual light fitting that prevents the light from coming out at more than about 30 degrees from the vertical. This illuminates the area directly under the light without the light itself being seen by oncoming drivers.

It's worth noting though that if there were *no* streetlights, pedestrians would probably have to carry their own lights making them a bit more visible at night.
At dusk, no realistic amount of lighting would help better define pedestrians.

I think that a lot of the street lighting in Ireland is both out of date in design - too much light above the horizontal and too much light outside of the area near the lightpole, and it is most often too bright for its purpose of road illumination. We'd be better off with a few more lights of much less wattage, closer together with better direction of the light output. Most of the new roads in the West have intelligent lighting designs, with full-cutoff light fixtures and attention to the sightlines of drivers. But that's a bit off-topic

We could do a lot better with our home lighting as well, and picking reflectors that throw the light where it is needed instead of going above or near to the horizontal. We should pick the positioning of lights that ensures that there is no glare - this means better lighting and more security. The so-called "Security Lights" that contain a 200w halogen bulb, in a fitting designed to throw up to half of the light away into the sky instead of on the ground, are a light pollution disaster. Add to that the fact that they are a criminal's dream, as they provide such a bright source of unshielded light that you could walk around under one and not be seen by someone a few hundred yards away because of the glare. So many company yards, football pitches (the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick needs to have every bulb shielded or fixed), or private homes have really poor lighting design, and most councils are either unaware or otherwise uncaring about the issue...

My old man's a spark, and I've been an astronomer for 25+ years. Light pollution and bad design and installation annoys me as it is so easily preventable.