The greatest threat to amateur astronomy today is the unreasonably excessive growth of severe light pollution. Because most cities demand effective lighting above all else, the harmful impacts of such extreme sources of light pollution have been neglected. What’s more unfortunate, we’ve forgotten the beauty and grandeur of the milky way--we’ve become accustomed to the starless sky. The issue has become less noticeable and therefore, less of a priority. For both amateur and professional astronomers, however, the level of modern-day light pollution is intolerable.

Did you know that light pollution has a substantially harmful impact on wildlife? For billions of years, all plants and animals have developed definitive rhythms based on the unchanging day, night, and seasonal cycles. These rhythms dictate crucial animal behaviors such as sleeping, reproduction, and predation. Within the last hundred years, however, these cycles have been drastically disrupted by the growth of humanity’s artificial night-time lighting. 

If you don’t actively stay up-to-date with developments in the lighting industry or international news, you may have missed the recent ban on halogen lighting in Europe. On September 1st, 2018, the use of halogen light bulbs was banned by the European Union. All halogen light bulbs are now prohibited and will be substituted with environmentally-conservative, energy-efficient light-emitting diode technology and compact fluorescent bulbs.

Although it’s invention is credited to Thomas Edison in 1879, multiple iterations of the first light bulb have existed since the early nineteenth century. Edison did, however, create a light bulb that was powerful, efficient, and cost-effective. Since then, the light bulb has become an irrevocable necessity in our lives--never given a second thought. As time has progressed, so has technology. Lighting’s changed drastically over time and the lightbulb has seen several notable advancements, the most recent being the creation of LEDs.