F E AT U R E By Will Jennings 1. View through the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Astronomers Clara Martínez-Vázquez and Cliff Johnson noticed one of their images, the 333 seconds-exposure seen here, contained at least 19 streaks that they quickly surmised were due to the second batch of Starlink satellites launched that week. © Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License from Noirlab
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That’s how the light gets in
Will new technology light the way, or are we better off looking at the stars?
O
ne night last May, I looked up to the blackness above London. Where once our ancestors saw depthless constellations of shimmering stars, there was only a darkish haze, and no stars were visible at all through the cloud of light pollution. Then, into that black came a staccato rhythm of small white lights, carving through the emptiness in a straight line.
As Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites pinpricked the night, symbols of human potential and mankind’s reach into new realms, my thoughts were not taken to a sci-fi future, but instead to the flat rural Suffolk landscape of my childhood. In the 1980s, there was a growing trend to illuminate historic architectures with overblown, glaring floodlights. Framlingham Castle, for instance, wasn’t so much washed in light than waterboarded with it,
flattening the subtle patina of history, and I recall a rural church relentlessly hovering in the dark at some indeterminate distance, an architectural apparition dislocated. Putting light into the darkness is a recurring human desire. In myth, allegory, faith and landscape, shadows are something we have sought to banish in search of a secure clarity and progressive visibility. But perhaps we should stop and ask if all light is good, 11
