Editorial/ Big moon: Illuminating a pollution problem

As it cleared the treetops the moon was, indeed, astonishingly big and bright. In the unclouded sky it seemed near enough to touch. One watcher, mocking the media spoilsports, gauged it at 14 percent larger than usual, and perhaps 7 percent brighter. The point was that numbers had nothing to do with this kind of celestial beauty and neither, really, did the convergence of solstice and perigee. Any full moon is a lovely thing to behold in the winter sky.

But it is best to keep the neck craned sharply backward and the gaze far above the horizon. In just about any settled place these days, the competition from streetlights, headlights, house lights, security lights -- and, just about now, the holiday lights that seem to grow about 14 percent brighter each year -- shrinks the moon to insignificance in the terrestrial landscape. This is light pollution, and refuge is getting ever more difficult to find.

One of Wednesday night's walkers went looking, trying out potential dark spots in the woods, in the wetland, in a knot of big, thick spruces; no luck. (The cemetery looked promising, but the gates were locked.) Everywhere electric light poured outward and upward, creating an overhead glow so intense that nothing was visible in the night sky but the half-dozen brightest stars, this splendid moon -- and the jetliners buzzing around it like fireflies.

Much sport has been made of predictions in the Old Farmer's Almanac that motorists would need no headlights during this lunar maximum. The truth is, it is no particular trick in wintertime to drive without headlights in most parts of the metropolitan area and many smaller cities -- as long as the road has been scraped down to the black. Waste light covers the basic illumination needs and then some.

The issue of light pollution is a newer one and has yet to get the serious attention it deserves. Certainly other environmental problems are more pressing. But the amount of energy wasted throwing light where it isn't needed, and doesn't belong, is hardly trivial; sensible alternatives are readily available and affordable.

As for the impact on environmental quality, one needn't be an astronomer to grasp what could be gained from putting some darkness back into the night sky. It's as simple a matter as being able to admire a full moon -- any full moon -- as it transforms the winter landscape.