Don’t be surprised if your kids sing these rhymes in the next couple of years. Research shows, stars in the night sky of Delhi are disappearing faster than imagined!
Astronomers are calling these fast disappearing stars in Delhi, “loss of the night”. They say it isn’t just the Diwali smoke every year that leads to a loss of stars but an overall rise of smog in the capital city on a daily basis.
Residents of bustling, skyscraper cities like Hong Kong, New York, Mumbai and Delhi have long resigned themselves to seeing stars only on vacation in rural areas. “Thirty years ago you could see the Milky Way in the Delhi sky and today you can count the stars on your fingers” shares, Raghu Kalra, secretary of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Delhi.
Astronomers further explain that it is not just smoke from vehicles or factories that affects the visibility of stars, but also the presence of ‘light pollution’, which is caused too many artificial lights used in major cities. These lights reflect into the night sky, making it unable for us to see the stars clearly. All one needs to do, is to switch off the lights that are not required!
"The number of stars visible in Delhi skies has gone down by at least 5% every year from 2008 to 2011", said Chander B. Devgun, president of Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), a nongovernmental organization that promotes science through astronomy.
He explains that the brightest stars are easily visible, but they are fewer in number. In rural areas where the limiting magnitude (stars visible from naked eye) is seven, the faintest stars are also visible, which means one can see more than 4,000 stars filling the night sky.
The Nehru Planetarium, along with the amateur astronomers group, started the ‘Light Pollution Survery’ in 2009, which allows ordinary people to send in data about the number of stars visible at a particular location at a given time. A similar project was started by SPACE, called the ‘Project Dark Skies’.
To reduce ‘light pollution’ SPACE recommends positioning the light fixtures better so that the light falls only on areas that need to be illuminated.
Still thinking?..Quickly go and find a starry sky to camp under, before it’s all gone! February sky in Rishikesh is one of the most beautiful starry camp options available closest to Delhi!
Photo by Ajay Talwar.