12-07-2025
Dim lights so stars can shine bright
It takes about 30 minutes for eyes to fully adjust to total darkness and only then does the night sky reveal its hidden constellations.
Most nights, the city's glow keeps regular folk from viewing the stars.
Under Kuala Selangor skies, on a recent trip with Tourism Malaysia and Sahabat Langit Utara (Salut), I found myself in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by darkness and silence.
With no lights to distract from the stillness of the night, the stars slowly showed themselves.
An app called Stellarium, with its gyroscope feature, helped us navigate the sky.
Moving my phone around, the app named each star and traced how they join together to form constellations.
After an hour, the sky grew clearer.
Away from light pollution, the human eye begins to grasp the vastness of the universe.
Staring at the Milky Way reminds us that we are just specks of dust and what we see is far more complex than the mind can truly comprehend.
The Milky Way can be seen on a clear, cloudless night from places with minimal light pollution.— Filepic
As Salut founder Nurul Fatini Jaafar explained, 'The Milky Way appears as a thin band of cloud that stays still and does not fade away.
'It is something we often forget to be grateful for, a natural wonder now hidden from much of the world by one main culprit: light pollution.'
To measure darkness, astronomers use the Bortle dark-sky scale, which ranges from Class 1 (the darkest skies where the Milky Way shines brilliantly) to Class 9 (city lights drown out all but the brightest stars).
In Kuala Selangor, areas far from city lights can reach Class 3 or 4, dark enough to reveal thousands of stars and the Milky Way's delicate band on a clear, cloudless night.
One of Salut's goals is to establish more dark-sky areas, far from urban glow, so our eyes can fully adapt and the cosmos can shine through.
According to a 2016 study by scientific journal Science Advances, Singapore's entire population lives under skies too bright to see the Milky Way, with 100% of its territory affected.
San Marino (100%) and Malta (89%) face similar levels of light pollution that keep the galaxy hidden from view.
It's at a level of light pollution that prevents eyes from ever fully adapting to true darkness.
Light pollution in Malaysia is also a concern.
A recent Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) study found that fireflies could mistake artificial lights for the flashes of other fireflies, leading them to abandon traditional mating grounds.
This shows that light pollution affects not only people but also wildlife.
However, there is hope. Earlier this month, the Malaysian Space Agency (MYSA) announced it was working on a light pollution guideline to help preserve astronomical activities, including astrotourism.
Expected to be ready by 2026, the guideline aims to minimise the impact of artificial lighting at night, supporting astronomy initiatives and the conservation of our natural environment.
In parts of Malaysia, such as rural Kedah, it is still possible to experience a Class 1 sky.
Fraser's Hill, near Kuala Kubu Baru, also offers spectacular stargazing conditions.
These locations are among the highlights in Tourism Malaysia's upcoming stargazing packages that open the door to astrotourism.
Over time, we forget that stargazing once guided sailors to safe shores and farmers, in terms of changing seasons.
The stars are something worth looking up at and preserving for generations to come.
