LED Street Lights for Mark

[Fay]

Is my street light the same as yours Robert?

[MarkS]

these are in my street

How do you find them in practice?  Good or bad? They look to me as if there should be very little sideways light spillage.  How well contained is the beam? Are they the same as the ones along Crofton Road?

Mark

[Fay]

well I have not been outside since they were put in.

[RobertM]

Is my street light the same as yours Robert?

Yes it is Fay except I had the council put shades around them.  The beam angle would have been about 160 (or more) degrees without; now it's more like 120-140 and doesn't light up our garden as much.  I don't know why they don't make proper adjustable shades to stop all the light ingress rather than attach a thin rim and call it a shade 

I must get a spectrum, but in any case they look like cool white which would peak in the blue somewhere.

Robert

[MarkS]

Tonight is the first clear night since the LED conversion and I've just recorded my highest ever sky quality here at home: 21.18 at 1:30am.  My previous best at home was 21.15.   I have also recorded 21.1 on 8 separate occasions.   Is this high value a coincidence?  It's too early to say.

The best I've recorded at a DSC was 21.31 at Rother Valley.
The best I've recorded at Kelling Heath is 21.38

Mark

[Carole]

That's good Mark, what was your reading at Cairds?

Carole

[MarkS]

Cairds was 21.1 on both occasions I've been.

Mark

[RobertM]

I'm glad it's worked out for you Mark.  It could be that the sharper cutoff and more vegetation (reducing reflected light) is helping.

Hopefully that won't be your best reading either

Is it noticeably any darker ?

Robert

[MarkS]

My latest project is to regularly photograph Ashford town from Wye Downs.  I'm very interested to see if the appearance of streetlights reduces and if the overall light pollution reduces over the next 18 months.  It could prove to be a most interesting case study.

Here is last night.  Canon 600D 18mm 120sec F5.6



Spot the well known constellation!

Mark

[Carole]

Well the glow is not as orange as comes out in most LP towns.  Are the street lights in Ashford itself now LED?

Carole

[MarkS]

Well the glow is not as orange as comes out in most LP towns.  Are the street lights in Ashford itself now LED?

No they are not LED yet.  They have started converting residential areas - this should be completed in July.  We must wait until next year before they convert the town centre and the main roads.

Mark

[Rick]

Presumably, then, that's just evidence of a lot of high-pressure sodium street lighting, probably augmented by all sorts of other poorly aimed floodlights and such...

[MarkS]

I have some higher resolution images with shorter exposure where the individual lamps can be seen.  They are predominantly orange. 

Here's a crop :


The pinprick "blue" lights are on top of the poles that hold up the Designer Outlet "tented" structure.  I don't know what kind of lights they are.

Mark

[Rick]

Mostly looks like standard high-pressure sodium rather than the cleaner yellow of low-pressure sodium.

I'd guess the blue might be decorative blue LEDs?