by Daniel M. Roy and Debbie Moran
These shielded LEDs in a restaurant garden in Las Cruces, NM are warmer and put light exactly where it is needed
Imagine an electricity generating company building an observatory, encouraging STEM education within the community as well as heightening the community’s interest in limiting light pollution. This is what the Exelon Corporation (now Constellation Energy) did in 2016 by building an observatory in the Muddy Run Recreational Park in southeastern Pennsylvania at a goldilocks distance from Lancaster. To quote from a 2020 edition of 50+ life, “This part of southern Lancaster County lies in truly dark skies, away from the light pollution of much of the surrounding area. But it is sufficiently close to Lancaster to attract a curious public. It is by far one of the most innovative and well thought-out and technologically sophisticated projects of its type in Pennsylvania.”
The light pollution problem
Here in Houston you have to drive a couple of hours to find dark skies like in Muddy Run Park. The International Dark-Sky Association founded in 1989 has been educating communities about lighting for three decades. They first coined the term “light pollution” to describe the adverse environmental effects not only on the night sky but also on the humans, animals and plants who live below. Of course, we need light at night to see and feel safe in cities and towns. But there is a way to do it without driving out our view of the stars.
The LED street light revolution is highly beneficial because LEDs consume a fraction of the energy of other lighting technologies. But Houston, like many other early adopters, is using them counter productively. What is the problem? LEDs are highly directional and pinpoint…a little goes a long way and it is easy to over light. The blue part of the spectrum that makes up 30% of their neutral white (4000K or Kelvin) color can cause a host of problems. The shorter wavelength is inherently higher glare for drivers and homeowners because it scatters worse in the atmosphere and your eye. The reason objects appear sharp under whiter light is that the eye’s pupil is shrunk down to the smallest possible opening. But this is also the same mechanism that destroys night vision, making nearby areas appear much darker. The shallow shielding on Houston’s lights still allows the bright LEDs to be seen from some distance causing some areas to disappear in the glare. We are using twice the brightness yet seeing only half the light.
Seeing is believing. We have gathered some examples of excellent as well as poor lighting on the new website www.softlighthouston.com. There you can find information on how to find good quality lighting. Shielded fixtures can be found using the key words “Dark Sky” but make sure they really do hide the bulb. For more information, also see www.darksky.org and www.idatexas.org.
And for more on light pollution please see
Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting – International Dark-Sky Association (darksky.org)
An inspirational project
The Ryan observatory construction began in 2016 in a truly dark skies part of southern Lancaster County, and the doors opened to the public in October 2017. The speaker at the opening ceremony was no less than Princeton quantum physics scientist the late Freeman Dyson (1923-2020).
From 50+ life again: “The Rittenhouse Astronomical Society of Philadelphia is the primary amateur organization that runs the Observatory. Monthly events are open to the public free of charge. Local amateur astronomers play important supporting roles, providing telescopes and educators”.
Attendance at one of the public outreach events at the Ryan observatory
The observatory is named for the Ryan Family and their efforts to bring a STEAM facility to the community, while honoring their daughter Layla, a brilliant young student of cosmology who tragically, passed away from a long-term illness in 2006 at age 24. In Layla’s honor, her parents established a scholarship at the University of Illinois for female astronomy students with a demonstrated history of “giving back” to the community. This happened to be a value shared by Exelon and Constellation, who have also supported the Layla S Ryan Scholarship.
Layla Ryan
I was fortunate to Email-interview her father, Mr. Al Ryan who led the effort to create the observatory in her name:
- What kind of telescopes are housed in the two domes?
1.Under one of the observatory domes a Celestron Edge HD 14 with an E S 80mm refractor equipped with a DS10C allowing the public to compare the eyepiece view in the 14” with the full color version from the refractor/camera combo that is piped to large flatscreen monitors on the walls.
2.In our second dome, a PlaneWave CDK14 telescope with a STXL 16200 camera that is primarily used for astrophotography. We intend to offer classes in astrophotography and make the observatory available under special circumstances to astrophotography class graduates. The third observatory houses our newest instrument that will soon be available to the public. This telescope is a binocular telescope and designed especially for use in public settings. . As far as we have been able to determine, with its 25 ½” mirrors, this is the largest binocular telescope designed for public use in existence.
Binocular Telescope, Moveable Shelter
We also make available a couple of 60mm Lunt solar telescopes, a C 9.25 Edge telescope, a 7” Questar and a few other smaller telescopes.
- Any notable observation made from the site?
- Last year we were able to capture an occultation of a star by Hi’iaka, a moon of Haumea (one of the Trans-Neptunian asteroids) which lies some 4 billion miles away. ). For more on this, see our web page at https://ryanobservatory.com/articles. The data was reviewed and published.
- One of our student interns worked with one of our imaging operators to help produce a narrowband image of Messier 27. That will be posted to the website in the near future.
- Any anecdote to make my paper alive (construction/funding/ops headaches, fun facts and stories)?
- I wouldn’t know where to start here. We have always aimed high and that hasn’t always met the financial constraints. But the site owner, Constellation Energy, has been magnificent and magnanimous in building all three facilities, retro-fitting the Visitors Center, providing staffing for public events and providing other non-descript support overall. Some headaches and issues are ongoing, and range from lack of volunteers, insufficiently trained persons, reliance on one source for funds to expand programming, purchase new software and hardware, upgrading same, etc. But the work we do has been extremely well received by the community. Our latest hero is a kid who is almost continually in the hospital but manages to get out for each of our monthly open house events. He is at most 8 years old but was thrilled when our primary astrophotography operator guided him through his very own capture of M13 with our equipment, which he and his family proudly displayed on Facebook.
A remarkable achievement
After a highly successful career in law, Mr. Ryan is even busier now with inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers as well as the curious public. We felt that this story was worth sharing at a time when “success” often consists in less honorable outcomes. A beautiful anonymous quote (wrongly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882) came to my mind:
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to live the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
The Ryan observatory is a testimony to the partnership between visionaries in the electric distribution, amateur astronomers and ordinary citizens animated by the common good.
To learn more:
Web site: Ryan Observatory
Facebook page (7) Ryan Observatory at Muddy Run | Facebook
Night sky net Ryan Observatory at Muddy Run | Night Sky Network (nasa.gov)
