Andrea Leistra schreef:
> On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, S.V. van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
>
> > Anybody noticed Belgium. It's the best lit state of the EU. And I bet it must
> > cost them a fortune to maintain. But it makes for a really wonderfull effect on
> > the satalite image.
>
> Wow.
>
> Different starting assumptions here, definitely.
>
> I look at Europe or the NE part of the US on a map like that, and I don't
> think "best lit", or about how expensive it must be; I think about what
> horrible light pollution that is, and how bad for astronomy.
>
> Tucson's really good about light pollution for a city of its size. The
> sky here is darker than it was in my parents' hometown over Thanksgiving,
> which has a fifth the people but had snow on the ground to bounce light
> back at the sky and has no light-pollution laws.
OK, I'll reformulate then. Belgium is probably no place for astronomers. :o) All of
the highways here are lit with orange lighting. Every 50 or 60 meters there is a
double!!! lightsource. This is especially amazing when I cross the border from
Belgium into the Netherlands at nights. From an overwhelming orange haze into total
blackeness. (ahum. And then to consider that orange is actually the Dutch national
color....) :o) Some parts of Dutch higways are lit as well, but if the frequency of
passing cars drops below a certain value the light goes out. We are afterall a modern
country, sponsering lots of electronic gadgets that, as such, aren't commercially
interesting. ;o)
Sonja
