May News Roundup: How One Holiday Can Reshape Your World.

Raystown at Night. (c) Bill McGeeney 2026

Here’s your monthly dose of updates affecting our nighttime environment. As a reminder, you can hear all of this, and more by heading over to LightPollutionNews.com and listening to our May Episodes: Reverse Vertigo and Trust Nobody, Check Everything. I bring on four guests: journalist Megan Eaves-Egenes; the creator of DarkSkySites.com, Barrington Russell; Statistician, Paul Marchant; and lawyer / researcher, Yana Yakushina.

This month, we had a great story from Andy Cochrane whom discovered the joy in running without light at night after his eyes adapted during a full moon run in Joshua Tree. It begs the question, when was the last time you took a stroll solely under the light of the moon, or even the milky way?

Elsewhere, Utah celebrated Dark Sky Month for the sixth year with one state park offering full moon paddle tours. And did you ever hear of Nyepi? It’s a Balinese holiday whereby people stay home, off the streets, and without electric for 24 hours. The official reasoning is to prove to the evil spirits that the Earth is desolate and that they should just move along…oh and it’s the only time on Earth a Bortle 9 becomes a Bortle 1. Finally, as far as experiences go, there’s a thing called "dusking." Apparently, it’s a ritual of watching the sky transition from day to night with lights kept off. Somehow the Dutch claim ownership to it, not sure how, or why.

A study examined whether partial nighttime lighting benefited animals. Spiny toads exposed to partial lighting fled to shelters and shifted activity earlier in the evening, indicating circadian disruption. Pumas and bobcats avoided artificially lit areas while mule deer moved toward them presumably to stay close to humans for protection. Bull ants in Australia navigate using polarized moonlight cues, and follow-up research revealed they possessed an internal lunar compass capable of predicting how the moon arcs over the night sky. Black capuchin monkeys slept higher in trees during less moonlit nights. Researchers believed that this was caused by a sense of darkness elevating perceived predation risk, but I think it’s because they just wanted to admire the milky way.

Global nighttime brightness increased 16% between 2014 and 2022, though actual brightening increased 34% offset by 18% dimming. While dimming included some responsible policies, much of it was due to less fortunate circumstances, including war and poverty. Global brightening, conversely, included the electrification of Sub-Saharan Africa.

New York's light pollution legislation made waves. Assemblywoman Debora Glick and State Senator Brad Holyman-Sigal introduced bills requiring all exterior lighting to be shielded after January 2028. Non-shielded fixtures must turn off between 11 p.m. and sunrise. Response proved contentious. Some sensational news sources claimed that the bill enabled crime despite shielding requirements and no mention of lighting removal. Exemptions to the bill were lengthy and, almost, all encompassing. They included sports facilities, advertisement signs, FAA lighting, worker safety lighting, and most hypocritically, Times Square.

Elsewhere in policy news, Buellton, California updated ordinances requiring shielded downward fixtures with 2700-3000 Kelvin color temperatures. Arcata, Oregon adopted Dark Sky International guidelines. Huntsville's 2016 ordinance took effect in January with the community opting for education rather than fines for non-compliance.

In satellite news, we knew SpaceX filed to launch one million mega-satellites but we didn’t know these satellites would be equipped with 600-foot solar panels, each. Professor Hugh Lewis calculated that such satellites would require 272 million annual collision avoidance maneuvers!! Amazon's Blue Origin planned 51,600 satellites. Starcloud matched Amazon and raised them 30k with a proposed 88,000 data center satellites. And bust out the champagne, SpaceX officially reached 10,000 Starlink satellites in March.