Darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject
35 comments
·January 11, 2025ungreased0675
Would it be unthinkable to just NOT have bright lights pointed at the sky all night? Could they still do this project with severe restrictions on light emissions? If there’s some reason it absolutely must include hundreds of outdoor sodium vapor lights then build it somewhere else.
WorkerBee28474
> Would it be unthinkable to just NOT have bright lights pointed at the sky all night?
That's possible, and directed/shielded lighting is commercially available.
However, the project's critics have already said that no plan the project comes up with will be good enough - “Even if [AES] do a perfect job, using perfect lights that probably don’t even exist and perfect shielding, there will be an impact and that will be significant [0]
[0] https://www.science.org/content/article/chilean-energy-megap...
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hackingonempty
If you were wondering if there was any issue even less important to Americans than the lives of pedestrians and cyclists, it is dark skies.
kortilla
Disagree. Or at least it’s a different set of people generally very supportive of dark skies.
There are many dark sky communities in the southwest that are otherwise standard car centric unwalkable american towns.
seattle_spring
Which is too bad, because it takes a special kind of heartless, empathy-lacking ghoul to disregard such things that make life on this Earth worth living to so many people.
darthoctopus
why is this downvoted? the specific cities (notably in Arizona) that have taken deliberate action on this are exceptions proving the general rule that light pollution is demonstrably less of a policy concern even compared to the notorious American disdain for walkable infrastructure.
WorkerBee28474
The telescopes are 8,000 miles south of America. Why does American policy matter?
ggm
Because the goods made will be sold to American consumers directly and indirectly and are priced to reflect all kinds of costs including EPA compliance in domestic markets.
European markets also demand European norms to labour and health and environment are met, even if tokenistically. To some it is a form of protectionism.
It's also the "why can't we make it here" reasoning. If you tried to make it in the US it would be white anted out by lawfare. That's what happened to BHP when they proposed metals and minerals processing plants on the Californian coast.
a1j9o94
It's also an American company building the project. The cultural values of the US are relevant.
dheera
I did a bunch of astrophotography in the Atacama desert last year, it was an absolutely phenomenal place. There are a lot of celestial objects you cannot image from the northern hemisphere and there aren't many other places in the southern hemisphere with weather conditions that good (maybe Namibia but it doesn't have the altitude advantage).
The only thing I wish is that some of the parks would be open after dark to shoot landscapes. Most of the parks closed before sunset, so I had to mostly image from roadsides, which was kind of sad.
WorkerBee28474
[flagged]
hombre_fatal
From TFA:
> It includes constructing a port, ammonia and hydrogen production plants
Ports and especially chemical plants are basically lightbulb arrays.
WorkerBee28474
They're not going to build a port "just 5 to 11 kilometers from telescopes" (from TFA) when the telescopes are 15km from the ocean. A chemical plant wouldn't be inland either because it will want access to the port.
ok_dad
You think a port and industrial plant that requires 3/4 of a gigawatt of electricity will be built within a limit of less than 4000m from the ocean port? Every port I’ve seen took at least a few kilometers of inland space. I also don’t think a few kilometers makes much of a difference to the light reduction, basically any light at all will harm the telescope.
I am surprised at the “meh” response from the commenters here, they want to build an industrial plant in one of the best places for astronomy. Can’t the plant go elsewhere? The telescope cannot go elsewhere.
thereisnospork
BANANAs in action, can't even build a green energy facility in the literal middle of nowhere without complaints.
culi
This isn't just about getting rid of the last place on earth you can sometimes get a truly dark sky. This is about progress itself
> Since its inauguration in 1999, Paranal Observatory, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has led to significant astronomy breakthroughs, such as the first image of an exoplanet and confirming the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 was awarded for research on the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, in which Paranal telescopes were instrumental. The observatory is a key asset for astronomers worldwide, including those in Chile, which has seen its astronomical community grow substantially in the last decades. Additionally, the nearby Cerro Armazones hosts the construction of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the world’s biggest telescope of its kind — a revolutionary facility that will dramatically change what we know about our Universe.
modeless
It's not literally the last place on Earth with dark skies. It's just one place with dark skies where they built a telescope. This isn't about protecting the sky and it's not about "progress", it's about protecting an investment of money in a telescope.
The price of launching giant telescopes to space is set to plummet in the next few years with Starship and New Glenn coming online. IMO we should be focusing on that rather than blocking development on Earth to preserve previous investments in ground based telescopes.
ok_dad
It’s an industrial plant with an attached power plant, it’s not like families will be using this power.
thereisnospork
How is it you think families get power, goods, and services?
Ammonia makes fertilizer - this plant will help feed millions, dropping food costs. Even if the power this plant is generating won't go directly to families, it will be going into the things they eat and the things they buy in place of power they can use directly.
fnordpiglet
It’s nothing to do with the merits of the project itself but that it would destroy a singular planetary resource.
fastball
It's not "destroyed". If a dire need for dark skies arises, you can always... turn the lights off.
kortilla
Headline is dramatic but misleading. Essentially the entire 7/10 of the planet in the ocean has skies as dark as this. Clarity significantly reduces the footprint, but there are massive chunks of mountain ranges untouched by human development in both hemispheres that would be just as clear as here.
If clear skies are important enough to block a new development, they should just unlock some land in the Himalayas or Rockies to replace this observatory.
gmueckl
This spot in the Atacama desert isn't special for it's lack of light pollution alone. The sky is rarely, if ever covered in clouds or haze. And the temperature gradient in the air has a shape that prevents random atmospheric distortions that would make long term exposures blurry. This combination of properties is exceedingly rare on Earth.
adriand
> they should just unlock some land in the Himalayas or Rockies to replace this observatory
That "just" is sure doing a lot of work in this suggestion.
tw04
Who is paying for this move and all the requisite supporting infrastructure? You aren’t just dropping it from a helicopter and calling it a day.
seattle_spring
I recommend reading up on why these observatories and telescopes are where they are in the Atacama. It’s not just about the lack of light pollution, it’s a specific geography that “smoooths out” the air. Something about the high elevation prominence coming up directly from the coast creates a unique situation that allows for longer exposures, something that is less possible out in the open ocean. The only other comparable place are the high peaks of Hawaii, but these are mostly off limits due to native protections.
Destroying an aspect of the dark skies in Chile will absolutely hurt astronomy. No, they would not just be able to move their operations out onto a different mountain range or into the open ocean.
niccl
who pays for moving the observatory?
It’s not just industrial sites. My “local” (4 hours away) dark sky spot is constantly battling light pollution. There’s an industrial complex that’s made an agreement to turn their lights off at midnight. They’ve made deals with the county to replace the lighting to be dark sky friendly, but they still have private land owners that refuse to cooperate and replace their lighting. I have many images of the Milky Way with ranch lights dotting horizon.