But modern nights are no longer dark. The stars are fading from our sight. Charlotte's night never gets darker than twilight.

The loss is possibly harmful to the human organism, and profoundly sad. But this is even sadder: The light pollution that's to blame is relatively easy to cure. The problem is that few people have heard of light pollution, much less how to stop it.

Some cities have learned. "You can go to Flagstaff or Tucson and you can see the Milky Way downtown," says astronomer Dan Caton, a professor at Appalachian State University and director of ASU's Dark Sky Observatory.

Caton is interim president of a newly formed N.C. chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, a group trying to stop light pollution and encourage better lighting. The group is working with Raleigh to draft a lighting ordinance to protect the night, while assuring adequate safety.

In Charlotte, the Carolinas' largest city, you'd need a powerful telescope to locate any interest in light pollution on the public agenda. The city has no light ordinance and, based on what I see, isn't enforcing the part of its zoning ordinance that requires outdoor lights to be shielded so they don't cause glare.

Ever since I walked into our backyard one April evening three years ago and saw the Hale-Bopp comet alight in the spring sky, I've wondered how much we Charlotteans could see if we tamed our lights. So I invited Caton on a light pollution tour Monday night.

We started in The Observer building. As we peered down at our new mailroom facility on Church Street, Caton pointed to its exterior lights. "Those are actually pretty cheesy fixtures, to use a technical term," he said.

The problem was not that it had lights, but that they were positioned so they blinded you with glare. If safety and security are your goals, blinding onlookers is not your smartest technique. "Glare," he said, "is the enemy."

We were on the third floor looking down, and shouldn't have been able to see the lights from above, where their illumination is wasted, he said.

The IDA doesn't want folks to turn off security lights, Caton said. "We're not against lighting, we're against bad lighting." Its guidelines are simple: Use the right amount of light. Use it only when you need it. Direct it downward.

With those principles in mind, we strolled up Tryon Street.

"I'm pleasantly surprised," Caton remarked. The streetlights were "full-horizontal cutoff," meaning the light bulb is visible only from beneath and doesn't extend down. The orange glow identified them as sodium vapor, which while not as attractive, is easier for astronomers to filter out than white light or the blue light from mercury vapor bulbs, Caton said.

He questioned the need for the Victorian-esque globe streetlights along Tryon, which made us squint. The overhead lights were enough, he said.

He said most of uptown's office towers are subtly, even tastefully lit. I pointed to the Wachovia Building - the one whose spotlights gleam straight up, so bright that if Earth ever contacts extraterrestrials, the first thing they may say is, "Could you turn down the lights on the Wachovia Building?"

Caton's assessment: "That one, in my opinion, is not worth lighting." Its brightness is out of proportion among the other towers, he said.

Other reactions:

Providence Road and Sharon Amity: Providence United Presbyterian Church was lit as if expecting an angelic visitation. Caton's remark: "Praise the Lord and pass the photons."

Cotswold Mall area: The four gas stations at Randolph and Sharon Amity Roads illustrated one of the worst light pollution problems - gas stations. Most are grossly overlit, sometimes by a factor of 10, Caton said. "They're simply advertising, `Buy my gas.' It's a light war." The Citgo station was so bright you'd need SPF 30 sunscreen to pump your gas. "This is horrendous!" Caton cried.

Citgo competes with three other gas stations on the other corners (a land use abomination, but that's for another day). "The poor Exxon over there, I hardly noticed it," Caton said, "because it has civicly responsible lighting."

This area also held the single most glaring light we saw - a monster behind Wendy's that hits motorists' eyes a good quarter-mile away on Sharon Amity. Runners-up were a bank of athletic lights at Pearl Street Park near Midtown Square, and a light at Burger King on Fairview Road, so bright we both involuntarily groaned.

Independence Boulevard: "Some of the worse offenders are car lots," Caton said. We saw nothing to disprove him. The lights aren't shielded, and their aim made me blink and squint, not something I like to do while driving on Independence Boulevard. Car lots often needlessly leave all their lights on all night, Caton said.

Overall, he was complimentary of the newer street lights, which Duke Power Co. owns and maintains for the city for a fee. Older fixtures, such as the '50s vintage mercury vapor lights, can be topped with something called a Hubbell Sky Cap, for about $20 he says. In sum, he said, the city's lighting could be healed, and pondered whether the worst light offenders - not counting billboards - might well be in rural areas.

Overhead, a lustrous half-moon bided its time. Concrete, Caton said, reflects 25 percent of the light that hits it. The moon, so bright, reflects but 10 percent. "Look," he said. "The original nightlight."