“But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars…If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember the only time I saw the Milky Way. I was camping on a remote beachfront, lying on my back. The night was clear and calm. The campfire had just died out, and everyone turned off their phones and flashlights. There, streaking through the midnight sky, I saw it: a muddy river flecked with a million stars. If I was ever filled with wonder for nature’s magnificence, if I ever came face to face with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “envoys of beauty,” it was that night.

Now, years later, unless I traverse to another remote beach or some equally marooned desert, my chance of seeing our galaxy is bleak. And I am not alone. One-third of the world’s population, including 60 percent of Europe and 80 percent of the United States, is bathed in so much light pollution, people can no longer admire the galaxy we inhabit.

Our inventions now clutter the night sky. 8,000 satellites orbit our planet each day. And at any one time, roughly 10,000 commercial planes are airborne. If you live in a city, and you look up after dark, what you are admiring might not be Orion, but rather Delta flight 395.

The problem isn’t just glowing objects overhead. Our cities emit so much artificial light from streetlamps, skyscrapers, vehicles, and stadiums, that we now have a term for it in our lexicon: sky glow. Anyone who has driven on the New Jersey Turnpike at night has seen sky glow emanating from New York City. Some have even observed it as far away as 100 miles from Manhattan. Commercial pilots too have reported seeing the sky glow of Los Angeles from 200 miles away as they approach LAX.

Evidence shows worldwide light pollution and sky glow have increased by 50% since the turn of the century. There is now so much artificial light blocking out the stars, that in 2001, John E. Bortle created a 9-level scale, which measures how much manmade light obstructs our view of the stars. The 2019 short film Lost in Light showcases each level of the Bortle Scale for the skies over California. The film serves both as a reminder of what people used to see after the sun went down, and as a premonition of what all our skies could become in the future.

Where I live, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., the night sky is situated at level 8 on the Bortle Scale. This means only the brightest stars can penetrate the city’s sky glow. Everything else, except for the flicker of commercial jets approaching Ronald Reagan airport, cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Consider now what the skies might have looked like in 1836, when Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay “Nature.” The population of Concord, Massachusetts was a mere 2,200 people. There were no planes, no satellites, no skyscrapers. There were no headlights, no glowing billboards, no football stadiums. His writing even predates Thomas Edison’s first incandescent lightbulb by 43 years. Sky glow or even modest light pollution simply did not exist. Emerson and the other transcendentalists of the time had the last full, unobstructed view of the night sky—the celestial bodies, the shimmering constellations, even the Milky Way, a sight now impossible to behold for 8 out of 10 Americans.

Over the last two hundred years, we have blotted out the stars. We have filled the darkness with millions—billions—of manmade lights, so vast and bright, that the glow of our cities can be seen on the horizon hundreds of miles away. And as light pollution increases, fewer people around the world will be able to see the Milky Way as Ralph Waldo Emerson did in 1836 or as I did ten years ago.

December 21st marks the Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year. The weather for Washington, D.C. calls for clear skies and calm winds. The moon will be a soft waxing gibbous. It will be one of the last opportunities for stargazing in 2023, and maybe even catching a glimpse of the Milky Way. Too bad no one around here will be able to see it.