Choose places to holiday that are not light polluted. Take a starmap and use a LED worklight to light your tent if you must. Light pollution is wasted energy at the very least.

The above map (<50KB) is clipped from a light pollution map of Oceania (291MB). Note the light pollution surrounding larger centres. I believe the red parts represent where only about 280 stars can be seen by the naked eye on a good night instead of the 3000 stars that should be seen in the black areas.

My big surprise when I saw this map, was the light pollution generated by what I assume to be a squid fishing fleet off Canterbury. It is larger than the pollution generated by the four cities of the Auckland Isthmus! Another was the joining of the LP of Hamilton, Matamata and Tauranga across the Kaimais. I expected the LP of Auckland and Hamilton to be joined, but the overlap is very little.

Noel

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