A child who can see 250 stars today may see fewer than 100 from the same place at eighteen: 51,351 naked-eye observations found the night sky brightening far faster than satellites had measured
A study based on citizen-science observations indicates that artificial light pollution is increasing global sky brightness by nearly 10% annually. This rapid rise threatens to significantly reduce the number of stars visible to the naked eye within a single generation.
Why it matters
The loss of dark skies has implications for human culture, astronomy, and potentially ecological systems that rely on natural light cycles.
Artificial light pollution is erasing the stars twice as fast as satellites suggested, threatening to dim humanity's oldest natural wonder within a single generation.
A child who can count 250 stars from home tonight may be able to see fewer than 100 from the same place at age eighteen if the recent measured rate of night-sky brightening continues.
The stars would still be there. The difference would be the artificial light scattered through Earth’s atmosphere between them and the observer.
That 250-to-100 comparison comes from a 2023 study in Science based on 51,351 naked-eye reports collected from 2011 to 2022. The researchers estimated that sky brightness at the participants’ locations was increasing by an average of 9.6 per cent each year, equivalent to more than a fourfold increase across eighteen years.
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