Every now and then, the northern lights make an appearance over Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On one such occasion, I was temporarily living in the town of Jackson instead my current home in Kelly, Wyoming, which discretely occupies a small southern corner of Grand Teton National Park. Realizing I hadn’t yet photographed the auroras from the nearby National Elk Refuge, I drove over shortly after dark to begin photographing them.
The display was fortunately one of the larger ones, with dazzling ribbons of varying colors streaking high into the northern horizon. As an extra bonus, a bit of maintenance was being done on the historic Miller House. This added an nice extra touch to the foreground.
As the activity began to wane just a bit, I turned my attention to the south, where I had a bit of trouble seeing the Milky Way as well as I normally do from Kelly. Granted, light pollution from Kelly is a fraction of what Jackson emits, yet I didn’t expect seeing through east Jackson to be that difficult. I captured a photo of the scene, surprised to see the extend of light pollution pouring out of downtown Jackson. And though the Milky Way is clearly visible in the photo, much more so than larger urban areas, it’s still striking to see just how much unused light is being spilled into the sky. Let that sink in. All that light, filling the sky, is completely unused, and thus, unneeded.
Imagine if all that light was directed downward. Imagine how much energy would be saved since it would actually be too bright on the ground. Imagine if the top of Snow King wasn’t lit up as brightly as dawn or dusk from excess light. Imagine if we gave our surrounding wildlife an actual night to sleep or hunt in. Now imagine how easy of a solution it is to attain.