Saving ‘the edge of night’
Development threatens stellar views of skies in Hill Country
“The heritage of our night sky, of being able to see our own galaxy that we live in and our place in the universe, is critical.”
Amy Jackson, volunteer with the Hill Country Alliance Night Skies team
Chris Hill peered through the lens of the telescope in his backyard one cold night, looking into the sea of stars and galaxies that pepper the night sky like grains of sand.
He walked to a pair of computers nearby and pressed a few buttons. A picture came into focus: a blue, transparent circle surrounded by rings of pink, red and orange popping out of a starry backdrop. It’s the Helix Nebula in the constellation Aquarius — 655 light-years away.
One of the brightest, closest and most visible planetary nebulae to Earth, the space phenomenon is more commonly known as “The Eye of God.” And Hill, an amateur astrophotographer, can see it from his Dripping Springs home.
“The night sky is extraordinary,” Hill said. “A lot of people don’t even know what’s up there. But this is something that we could lose, as a civilization — our appreciation of where we are in the universe.”
Dripping Springs is one of just 34 officially designated Dark Sky Communities on the planet, according to the International Dark Sky Association. To earn a Dark Sky designation, cities, towns, parks or organized communities must go through a rigorous application process that demonstrates both widespread support for the Dark Sky tag as well as specific laws and ordinances that discourage or eliminate nighttime light pollution.
In essence, a Dark Sky Community is a place where the night sky can be viewed at its absolute best, without the obstruction of bright city lights. In addition to communities, there are also official Dark Sky Parks, Dark Sky Reserves, Dark Sky Sanctuaries and Dark Sky Friendly
Developments of Distinction.
The Hill Country is home to all four of Texas’ Dark Sky Communities: Dripping Springs, Wimberley Valley, Fredericksburg and Horseshoe Bay. And this year, Boerne, Kendall County’s largest city, has attempted to sharpen its lighting ordinances, angling for a Dark Sky Community designation.
But the starry night sky is becoming increasingly threatened by the region’s robust economic development and population boom.
Towns such as Dripping Springs have grown in population by more than 300 percent over the past decade, and the entire Hill Country region is experiencing a housing boom as more people flee the metropolitan areas of San Antonio and Austin. More people, homes, cars and buildings means more light pollution and less visibility for the starry sky.
“Unfortunately, current light pollution is increasing by 2 percent every year,” said Dawn Davies, the night sky program coordinator with the nonprofit Hill Country Alliance. “That may not sound substantial, but we have already seen a tremendous loss.”
But there is hope for the preservation of the night sky even as the region experiences profound economic growth, said Amy Jackson, founder and director of Starry Sky Austin and a volunteer with the Hill Country Alliance Night Skies team.
Other communities in the U.S. have managed to grow while keeping policies in place that maintain the Dark Sky designation and allow for people in big cities to look up at night and see the wonders of the galaxy, Jackson said.
“Flagstaff, Ariz., is a Dark Sky community, and you can see the Milky Way from the Walmart parking lot. That’s awesome,” Jackson said. “It’s totally doable. It just takes some planning and people who care about it.”
Heritage of night
Getting people to “care about it” is almost always the first step in grassroots organizing that can lead to Dark Sky designations, Jackson said.
And for most people, one look through a telescope at an endless night sky is enough to plant the seed.
In the Hill Country’s four Dark Sky communities, you can look up and see millions of stars with the naked eye, as well as planets such as Saturn and Venus and every constellation imaginable.
“Once you go outside at night, and you go see the Milky Way galaxy, that’s not a selling point to everyone,” Jackson said. “But it is a magical, beautiful human experience, and if more people did that, well, they might get it.”
Besides people being dazzled and amazed, having a clear night sky to look at is also profoundly important for science, curiosity and understanding of the human experience, she said.
It also encourages people to go into science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And it inspires children to want to learn about science and history — how ancient civilizations named constellations, for instance.
“The heritage of our night sky, of being able to see our own galaxy that we live in and our place in the universe, is critical,” Jackson said. “Eighty percent of our population lives in urban centers, and they never get to see our galaxy or our home in the universe. It’s a big deal.”
Davies said night skies are also simply “cool” and that the expansive natural landscapes of the Hill Country region make it ripe for stargazing. “I think that very deep seated within us is just this natural connection to the night skies, whether it’s spiritual or scientific or a more natural connection,” she said.
Light pollution
Chris Hill, the astrophotographer, spends every clear night he can in his backyard looking up at the stars.
Through his telescopes and computers, Hill says he can see and photograph galaxies, nebulae, globular star clusters and other “deep sky objects of interest.”
“We moved here because this was a Dark Sky community. It made it all the more reason to come live here,” he said of the decision he and his wife, Karen, made to move to Dripping Springs from Seattle.
To be an official Dark Sky community, Dripping Springs has strict outdoor lighting ordinances. All nonresidential outdoor lighting must be dimmed by 75 percent at night, and outdoor advertising signs must be cut off by 10 p.m. All outdoor lighting can only be at 3,000 Kelvins or less (the average outdoor lighting rating is between 2,500 and 4,000 Kelvin) and must have shielding around the lightbulbs so all the light is directed down to the ground instead of toward neighboring properties or the sky.
But Hill is concerned that even with such provisions on the books, the Dark Sky way of life he moved for is increasingly being jeopardized by new developments intended to accommodate even more people who are wanting to move there, such as a four-lane highway planned for Dripping Springs that would be an expansion of FM 150.
The highway, which has not yet begun construction or cleared preplanning development phases, is expected to cut across several family ranches that Hill can see from his backyard.
He’s also noticed an increase in light pollution from places just outside the city limits — ballfields, subdivisions, commercial properties — that create a “light dome,” which affects his ability to see deeper into the sky.
Light pollution comes in many forms — leaving lights on at night that don’t need to be on, using super bright lights instead of soft warm lights, shining lights into the sky that don’t need to be there.
In addition to blocking people’s views of the stars, it can also lead to disruptions in people’s circadian rhythms as they’re sleeping. And, Davies said, it can affect nocturnal wildlife that relies on the moon and stars for navigation and hunting.
“We could see a tremendous decline in the number of species and possibly even their presence within the Hill Country alone,” Davies said. “If we lost that battle on all fronts, it would be detrimental to life as we know it.”
Star-friendly growth
That the 17-county Hill Country region is on a seemingly unstoppable growth trajectory is a fact of life, Davies said. People are drawn to the region because of its natural beauty, pastoral way of living, ranches and farms, and rolling hills.
If the area wants to preserve its charm and distinction, to include its night skies, more people need to get involved in keeping light pollution to a minimum.
“There’s that push and pull of, how do you minimize light intrusion that comes from industrial growth, whether it’s commercial or residential?” Davies said. “It’s all about finding that middle ground, finding sustainable ways to maintain and encourage development but minimize and mitigate that light pollution and trespass.”
To make more dark skyfriendly communities, Jackson says the best way to start is from the ground up — make changes in your own home and on your own property and work your way up to civic action.
“Start with your home, do a home lighting assessment, look around and change the lighting habits in your house,” Jackson said. “Then go out and join a Friends of the Night Sky group in Central Texas, and then get more politically active and do civic things, like go talk to your city council.”
Just last month, the International Dark Sky Association and Travis County commissioners announced that Milton Reimers Ranch Park near Austin received the official designation of being an International Dark Sky Park. The 2,400-acre park is home to the Reimers Observatory, a public site that provides about 100 programs every year.
Jackson said night sky enthusiasts often refer to the Hill Country, which is west of the Interstate 35 corridor, as “the edge of night” because it has significantly less light pollution than areas east of the corridor.
She said that if the area wants to keep being on “the edge of night,” people need to take stock of the things that make the Hill Country so unique and advocate for ordinances such as the ones in place in Dripping Springs, Wimberley Valley, Fredericksburg and Horseshoe Bay.
“We’re in this unique place to say, ‘OK, let’s take a pause: How do we want west of I-35 to look?’” she said. “We’ve really got to think about that, and a lot of people are already doing that, and it’s really exciting.”