来源：《卫报》
刊登日期：2021年4月7日
Severe light pollution in Britain appears to have fallen, according to the CPRE, the countryside charity. Across a week in February, the charity asked volunteers to look up and count the stars they could see. The results suggest that 51% of participants were experiencing severe light pollution, compared to 61% the previous year – an effect, the charity concluded, of darker town and city centres, owing to lockdown. Sadly, though, the overall trend is worrying: human illumination of the planet is growing by 2% a year. This has serious consequences: there is mounting evidence that light pollution is a serious contributing factor to the substantial reduction of insect population. Disoriented by light, birds also die as they migrate over cities: a distressing 100,000 a year die over New York City, confused by the illumination of the skyscrapers. The solution is simple and obvious: to turn unnecessary lights off – also saving energy – and to shade those required at street level.
据乡村慈善机构CPRE称，英国严重的光污染似乎已经下降。在2月份的一周时间里，该慈善机构要求志愿者抬起头，数一数他们能看到的星星。研究结果表明，51%的参与者经历了严重的光污染，而前一年的这一比例是61%。该慈善机构认为，这是由于封城导致城镇和市中心更加黑暗的影响。但令人遗憾的是，总体趋势令人担忧：地球上的人类照度正以每年2%的速度增长。这有严重的后果：越来越多的证据表明，光污染是导致昆虫数量大幅减少的一个重要因素。由于被光线照射迷失方向，鸟类在城市上空迁徙时也会死亡：每年有10万只鸟类在纽约上空死亡，它们被摩天大楼的照明弄得不知所措，令人痛心。解决方案简单明了：关掉不必要的灯——同时也节省能源——并为路灯加灯罩。
Light pollution also has the effect of separating humans in densely populated areas from what was once a vivid, intense, and often deeply generative relationship with the night sky. In ancient Babylonia, astronomy was linked with the development of branches of mathematics, with cosmology, and with the establishment of calendars. Early Greek philosophers and mathematicians were also concerned with the arrangement of the heavenly bodies, borrowing heavily from their eastern ancestors to try to understand the universe and the human place within it. Stars, of course, have been used since time immemorial to help human beings move around the planet: Polynesians used a range of methods, including star navigation, to travel vast distances across the Pacific.
光污染还会使人口稠密地区的人们失去与夜空的联系，这种联系曾经是生动的、强烈的，而且常常是产生深远影响的。在古巴比伦，天文学是与数学分支的发展、宇宙学和历法的创立联系在一起的。早期的希腊哲学家和数学家也关心天体的排列，大量借鉴他们东方祖先的思想，试图理解宇宙和人类在其中的位置。当然，从远古时代起，星星就被用来帮助人类在地球上移动：波利尼西亚人使用了一系列方法，包括星光导航，穿越太平洋进行了远距离旅行。
The stars also brought a wealth of stories to many cultures. The Great Bear, or Ursa Major, was once the Arcadian princess Callisto, a follower of the hunter goddess Artemis. After she was raped by the god Zeus she was, in an early example of victim-blaming, transformed into a bear. Her human baby was taken away from her and raised at his grandfather’s court; when he grew up he went out hunting and, not recognising his ursine mother, would have killed her, had he not been turned into the Little Bear, Ursa Minor.
这些星星还为许多文化带来了丰富的故事。大熊星座，前身是阿卡迪亚的公主卡利斯托，她是狩猎女神阿耳忒弥斯的追随者。在被宙斯强奸后，她被变成了一只熊，这是早期受害者有罪论的一个例子。她的人类孩子被从她身边带走，在他外祖父的宫廷里抚养；长大后，他出去打猎，没认出自己的熊妈妈，要不是他变成了小熊星座，他就把自己的妈妈杀死了。
When we look up at night, we instinctively feel that we are in the presence of something magnificent. We, just like other animals on Earth, desperately need our dark skies.
当我们仰望夜空时，我们本能地感觉到自己置身于壮丽的事物之中。我们，就像地球上的其他动物一样，迫切需要夜空。