The New England Light Pollution Advisory Group

The New England Light Pollution Advisory Group (NELPAG) is a volunteer group founded during the autumn of 1993 for the purpose of educating the public on the virtues of efficient, glare-free outdoor night lighting -- and the tremendous benefits of low-lumen (low-light-output) lighting for many (if not most) outdoor applications. The NELPAG sponsors irregular meetings throughout the New England region that bring together lighting engineers, physicians, power utility representatives, government officials, astronomers, journalists, and the general public for discussion of improvement in outdoor night lighting. The goals of the NELPAG have been to provide resources to people involved in outdoor lighting issues, from state and city/town officials discussing the implementation of laws and bylaws, to utility companies who are concerned with street lighting, to ordinary people interested in lighting their store parking lot (or even their driveway or yard).

This website was the first devoted to light pollution on the emerging World Wide Web and has always been among the most-accessed websites on this topic; the first official IDA website was also hosted here alongside this NELPAG website in the mid-1990s (due to the pre-existing NELPAG website and its success, as a favor to the IDA). A big role of NELPAG has been providing information through this Website since early 1995, with hundreds of accesses to this page being logged every week for many years (the week ending 1997 May 4 had 766 accesses to this page in that week alone; by August 1999, this webpage was accessed over an estimated 100,000 times since 1995). We have found that there is a great public demand for information on outdoor-lighting issues; prior to the establishment of websites like this, there had been a great dearth of sources that the interested individual could seek out for information on outdoor lighting. It should not be surprising, then, that we have received high praise from many people around the world for the information provided here.

Many outdoor lights are, in fact, completely unnecessary (such as most lights late at night, and streetlights along most limited-access highways, where 6-foot-high median barriers would provide much greater safety). On a separate webpage here, we outline the key light-pollution issues.

News:

The NELPAG issues a news Circular irregularly that can be obtained via e-mail, with most Circulars also available here on a separate webpage.
Early in 2007, we have obtained the rights to the domain name NELPAG on the World Wide Web, with the new URL being www.nelpag.org. The plan is to gradually build up a new revised NELPAG website after being here on the CfA computers since 1994; until that happens, going to www.nelpag.org will simply send readers to these CfA webpages (though a preliminary version of www.nelpag.org is available here, now).
Other news

Other useful information:

The Good Neighbor Outdoor Lighting brochure, prepared initially by the NELPAG, contains a list of full-cutoff outdoor lighting fixtures, along with serial numbers and manufacturers.
Table listing different types of lamps: watts vs. lumens.
Additional lamp comparisons: watts vs. lumens [from IDA].
Additional lamp comparisons: efficiency [from IDA].
Additional economic issues in outdoor lighting [from IDA].
Definitions of lighting terms [from IDA].
Some good model ordinances for cities and towns:
- Model outdoor-lighting ordinance from Kennebunkport, ME.
- The best lighting ordinance in the world: Tucson, AZ [from IDA].
- Another good existing outdoor-lighting ordinance, from Cloudcroft, NM.
- Sample lighting ordinance for cities/towns
Info regarding the outdoor-lighting bill under consideration by the Massachusetts state legislature.
Get on the NELPAG e-mail discussion-group list! Just send e-mail to NELPAG-REQUEST@harvee.billerica.ma.us, asking to be placed on the list (stating the e-mail address you want used), and you'll get the NELPAG Circulars and other discussion threads on outdoor lighting issues that are sent out by discussion-group members.
Other useful WWW links regarding light pollution

This page is maintained by D. W. E. Green [dgreen (at) eps.harvard.edu]. These pages were produced and made available here because of the prominence of this problem to cometary observers, and in support of IAU Resolution 2 at the 20th General Assembly of the IAU, which "strongly urges (a) that all astronomers request civil authorities and others in their countries to implement solutions to preserve the quality of observing conditions, and (b) that all national organizations bring these concerns to the notice of adhering organizations, space agencies, and others in their countries" (IAU Today No. 10, 1988 Aug. 11).

Plus lucis non semper melius est.