一项在每天凌晨1点30分进行的、持续了10晚的实验揭示了污染夜空的人造光的主要来源。

 

As well as obscuring our view of a naturally dark night sky with that all-too-familiar glow, artificial light can disrupt our sleep and affect our health. It also affects wildlife, disrupting the natural light-dark cycle that insects, birds and other animals are tuned¹ into.

人造光源发出的熟悉的光亮不仅会模糊我们看夜晚漆黑天空的视线，它还会扰乱我们的睡眠，影响我们的健康。这种光亮还会影响野生动植物，扰乱昆虫、鸟类和其它动物所遵循的黑白昼夜交替的周期。 

 

To get to the root of the problem, the city of Tucson, Arizona, dimmed its 14,000 streetlights while researchers used a satellite to measure the effect. Capturing an image of the city at 01:30 every morning revealed that 80% of the urban light that was wasted by being beamed upward into space was from non-streetlight sources, including billboards², signs, floodlights, and facades³. 

为了找到问题的根源，美国亚利桑那州图森市调暗了1.4万盏路灯，与此同时研究人员使用人造卫星来测量其影响。人造卫星在每天凌晨1点30分拍摄一张该城市的图像，结果发现，80%的城市光因被射向天空而被浪费掉，这些光亮来自非路灯光源，包括大型广告牌、招牌、泛光灯和建筑物立面。 

 

The International Dark Sky Association estimates that unnecessary or inefficient⁴ artificial light wastes about three billion US Dollars every year. Turning it off could reduce our energy consumption while most of us are fast asleep.

国际暗天协会（The International Dark Sky Association）估计，不必要或低效的人造光源每年浪费约30亿美元。在我们大多数人熟睡时，关掉这类照明设备可以减少能源消耗。

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