A child looking up at the night sky today could see hundreds of stars from home. But if the current rate of artificial skyglow continues, that same view could look dramatically different by the time the child turns 18. The stars themselves will not disappear. Instead, increasing artificial light scattered through Earth’s atmosphere could make many of them impossible to see.
A 2023 study published in Science examined 51,351 naked-eye observations collected between 2011 and 2022 and found that sky brightness at participating locations was increasing by an average of 9.6 per cent each year. If that rate continued, a child who could see 250 stars today could see fewer than 100 from the same place at 18, as quoted in a report by ScienceDaily.
