Goodbye to Night: 80 Percent of Humanity Lives Under Light Polluted Skies

Light pollution over Joshua Tree National Park. (Credit: Dan Duriscoe) The beauty of the night sky is rapidly fading, and an update to the first global light pollution map, created 15 years ago, makes that painfully clear. The new atlas revealed that more than 80 percent of the world lives under light-polluted skies – that rises to 99 percent of the population in the United States and Europe. One-third of humanity can no longer see the Milky Way. As the new map shows, the night sky is slowly retreating to the glow of artificial light.