Do You Have a Street Light That is Shining Onto Your House?
by Donna Pursley
Many towns in Connecticut have or will be transitioning to LED street lights. Because of the bluer color, these lights can produce more glare. The fixture should be mounted so it is level and not angled in any direction.
If you have light from a street light shining into your house, most local utilities will install a glare shield for you. I had this done a month back and it works great. Instead of having the light from the street light shining through my house to the back wall, it now doesn’t make it all the way down the driveway.
The residents in UI and Eversource areas have the ability to call and have a glare shield installed. You call as if you had a street light problem. (You do.) They will need your address, the pole number (big numbers on the pole), and a call back number.
For UI, call the street light repair line at 203-499-2290. It took them 1 week from the time I called to come out and install the shield. They never called to ask for more information. My town does not have LED fixtures yet. My problem was that they just installed a taller pole and mounted the light higher which caused it to shine further onto my property.
For Eversource, call customer service at 800-286-2000, options 1, 3. I don’t live in this area, but I was told that they would install glare shields if someone in their service area called to request one.
Wallingford Electric said that they would not install a shield. Instead, they said they would consider taking down the light. Maybe a better solution?
The City of New Haven owns and maintains the city’s street lighting system. You can call 203-946-6091 if you have a glare issue. They do not have glare shields but will come out and verify that the light was installed correctly.
I am interested to hear if anyone else has any experiences with street lights. You can email me at secretary@asnh.org.
Some Astronomy Links
Selected by Ray Kaville
If you want to explore images of astronomy and space exploration, a great resource is the NASA Image and Video Library. You can search for images or videos of a specific object (e.g., Saturn, Andromeda Galaxy). Most of the images are not copyrighted and can be used for educational and non-commercial purposes, but you should give credit to NASA.
Here is a link to an article with a large poster that displays all the unmanned spacecraft missions through the solar system. The poster is so detailed that it is hard to read at a normal screen size, but this article includes a zoomable version of the poster.
Prints of the poster can be purchased from here:
https://www.popchartlab.com/collections/best-sellers
Another poster shows the entire history of human space travel:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0211/4926/files/P-Space2_Zoom_0501.jpg?14555061489894755973
The International Dark Sky Association has a collection of very nice videos and other products that it sells as part of Project Skyglow. The video trailers at this link are by themselves worth watching.
https://skyglowproject.com/#new-page
The August 21 solar eclipse that will cross the United States is receiving a lot of attention. Here are some links with information about the eclipse:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/
Solar Eclipse 2017 Traffic and transportation information
https://www.facebook.com/
Federal Highway Administration Facebook page
https://www.pinterest.com/
Ideas and opportunities you can use to enjoy the eclipse
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/
NASA page on using science in the shadow
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/
NASA Goddard – Eclipse web site
https://www.nasa.gov/
Live coverage from NASA. Excellent page.
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/
Multiple stream sources of Eclipse 2017 related live coverage
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/
Various Desktop and Web based applications for 3D eclipse monitoring