THE PROMISE FOR STARRY EYES
 -------------------------
 John Pazmino
 Amateur Astronomers Association
 2000 October 28

[ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE 89TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
AAVSO, OCTOBER 27–28, 2000, WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS] 

    In this slidetalk, supplemented by a poster exhibit, a status 
report on New York City’s ongoing eradication of luminous graffiti as 
of the end of the 20th century was laid out. The focus was on 
Manhattan, the core of the Big Apple. 
    Streetlamps are under global replacement in many parts of 
Manhattan, including Midtown, Greenwich Village, City Hall, and Lower 
Manhattan, with a variety of new lamps to give starfriendly 
illumination on the street. 
    By the turn of the new millennium, the City achieved essentially 
complete evisceration of light pollution from store and facade 
lighting. This is a direct spinoff of the theme that stores on 
Manhattan must redo their frontages every three to five years to 
conform to the modern codes for illumination. 
    Area and grounds lighting of immense corporate and commercial 
facilities stresses shielded, modest, occulted lamps. These include 
footlamps in parapets and sidewalls, lamppoles with large hoods, 
sconce lamps, ballards with concealed lamps. The World Trade Center, 
by a combination of these features, emits less light into the sky than 
a typical rural truck stop, despite it being quite the equal in urban 
activity as all of downtown Boston. 
    Astronomers in New York can monitor their progress toward a star-
friendly cityscape from the tops of the towers. From here, they see 
New York from the eye of a star! Photographs from the Empire State 
Building showed that on the whole Manhattan — a conurbation equal to 
the region around San Diego, Miami, or Boston, already sends fewer 
excess skyward photons than its suburbs across the rivers. 
    With the accomplishments so far and with continuing work in 
progress, our profession set itself the goal that before this decade, 
the first in the new millennium, is over we will see the Milky Way 
from Manhattan—and see it with the bare eye.