I really should explain that what you are seeing is steam (not smoke and fire) when we are just barely out of a fog.
It is reflecting the High Pressure Sodium light. HPS is getting to be a pollution - it is everywhere. Look around at night little patches of red-orange everywhere. See the orange glow of cities.
I don't remember the first time I saw High Pressure Sodium light. I do remember the first time I saw low pressure sodium (which is even redder). That was in 1967 lighting a parkway in Dallas, TX. It looked so strange - especially from the air. This red strip through town.
By 1967, mercury vapor had been around for a while, but even then most street lighting was incandescent. When you did see a mercury vapor light, it was unique and people took notice. High Pressure Sodium street lighting began three years later, in 1970. In the following 40 years it became omnipresent. No one notices any longer even though there are bright orange skyglows over every city and town in the nation - perhaps the world.
Perhaps over the generations we will evolve to adapt to HPS, but to this generation, orange just does not seem to be the way the night should be.
2 comments:
No, orange light is not my idea of 'light'. I'll take the soft glow of yellow, candle light maybe. I am ready to going back to the happiness of sliding down the grass hill behind the school on a piece of cardboard. No worries. No cares. Just friends, fun and laughter as the sun receded to the west and the light of the fireflies set about their glow.
We must give lengthy deliberation to what has to be decided once and for all.
Publilius Syrus
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