Tereza Pultarova reports via Space.com: Light pollution poses a growing threat to astronomy, but new streetlight technology could restore a clear view of the night sky. (…) A study released earlier this year found that stars are disappearing from the sky at an average rate of 10% per year. This trend affects even the most remote observatories in the world. German startup StealthTransit recently tested a solution to this growing problem. “Unfortunately, this problem haunts almost all observatories today,” Vlad Pashkovsky, founder and CEO of StealthTransit, told Space.com in an email. “Modern telescopes are very sensitive and feel the impact of outdoor lighting from cities 50 or even 200 kilometers (30 to 120 miles) away. This means that virtually every observatory on Earth already needs or will have need in the future. 10 years, big city light protection.”
StealthTransit’s solution relies on three components: a simple device that flashes LED lights at a very high frequency imperceptible to the human eye, a GPS receiver, and a specially designed shutter on the telescope’s camera that can flash in sync with the LED lights. . GPS technology guides the telescope’s shutter to open only during those fleeting moments when the LED lights are off. The experiments, carried out at an observatory in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, showed that the technology, called DarkSkyProtector, could reduce unwanted sky glow in astronomical images by 94%. “We can say that the telescope was seeing an almost dark sky at that time,” Pashkovsky said. “The important aspect of our technology is that it makes all kinds of lighting suitable for astronomy, including outdoor advertising and interior lighting of apartments, offices and stores.”
The technology could filter lights from nearby towns and villages as well as those surrounding the observatory itself. It may seem impractical to re-equip an entire city with devices that allow lamps to flash, but Pashkovsky said most existing LED lights can operate in flashing mode and new lamps designed specifically to protect the sky would not be more practical. expensive than existing LED technology. . The most expensive part of the DarkSkyProtector system is the telescope shutter, which must be light and nimble enough to blink about 150 times per second. StealthTransit tested the shutter prototype on a 24-inch-wide (60 centimeters) telescope and hopes to make the technology available for larger telescopes. Although StealthTransit’s technology is not yet ready for commercial use, Pashkovsky said, the company hopes to have a product suitable for the world’s top telescopes within five to seven years.
