The night skies above our cities and towns - even our villages - glow a bright sodium orange; the most brilliant stars our galaxy has to offer glow feebly through this colourful canopy.

Galloway Forest Park has recently been honoured with the status of the UK's first Dark Sky Park. Perhaps it is time for us to dim the lights on the skies above all our cities.

Who needs 'em!
It's estimated that as little as 10% of the population of the UK live in an area where they can see the bright band of The Milky Way. I wonder how many of the remaining 90% think, like i used to, that it is entirely normal to look up on a dark and clear winter's night and see a modest scattering of stars?

I've enjoyed stargazing for as long as I can remember; I've whiled away countless hours peering out into the universe both with my binoculars and my unaided eye. But I didn't sit under a dark, truly dark, sky until I spent last Christmas in the English Lake District. I suspect that a large amount of the population wouldn't think that there is anything to be gained by drastically cutting light pollution - not too long ago I would have fallen into this camp. On my holiday, though, I was floored - totally and utterly floored - by the thousands of stars that peppered the sky, and the eerie sense of having the entire cosmos wrapped around me.

By way of making a point I've included 2 photos below - one taken from my garden in Bristol, one from the holiday I mentioned above. Same camera, same time of year, same viewing conditions. How depressing that it took me 22 years to see such a magnificent sky.

Astronomers aren't troubled a great deal by the light pollution that plagues our towns and cities. Most professional telescopes are situated well away from artificial sources of light, and sodium streetlamps shine in such a narrow spectrum that their effects are quite easily mitigated by filters. Wouldn't it be nice if every resident of every city was afforded a brilliant starry sky?

Money, money, money
I guess the only reasonable objection to making the switch to darker skies is the cost of replacing or modifying significant amounts of lighting in our cities and towns, and along our motorways.

The cost of replacing lighting may indeed be high, but when you consider that more efficient lighting should equate to lower running costs the change starts to seem more attractive. Every photon that escapes a light fixture and finds itself heading skywards represents wasted energy.

The solution then is not to remove lighting and make navigation a nightmare, but to introduce efficient lighting that illuminates only what it needs to. Full cutoff lighting achieves this by utilising flat lenses parallel to the ground to ensure that no light at all shines at an angle greater than 90degrees to the fixture.

There are many organisations trying to secure darker skies - among them the Dark Sky Society, Need-less, Dark Sky Scotland, and the Campaign for Dark Skies.

So consider supporting one of those organistions, or writing to the authorities in your area, or highlighting by any means the pitiful state of our national skies - and perhaps, one day, we'll all be seeing stars.