Return to my Astronomy/Space pages
Go to my home page
© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
A number of years ago, the city of San Diego decided to get new street lights. The astronomers at Palomar Mountain (which used to be called Mt. Palomar) suggested that the city get a certain kind of mono-chromatic orange street lights. The light from these mono-chromatic orange street lights would be easy to filter out of photographs taken with the telescopes at Palomar Mountain. Palomar Mountain had been suffering from San Diego's light polution for many years, and these mono-chromatic orange lights would improve seeing conditions quite a bit.
The debate became quite heated, in the city council and in the news media. A lot of expressed opinion was of this kind:
How dare those astronomers (who are apparently good for nothing anyway) tell us what color to make our street lights.
Some thought that orange street lights might promote crime, as seeing would not be as good. There might be more accidents.
The debate went on for several months, until someone noticed that the lights that the city planned to buy, instead of the mono-chromatic orange lights, were orange as well.