The Northern Lights are seen near the southwestern Adirondacks on Oct. 10, 2024. The lack of light pollution made the region an ideal vantage point. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)

LAKE PLACID — For celestial enthusiasts, the past several days have been a celebration of the night.

This week is International Dark Sky Week. Founded in 2003 by Jennifer Barlow, then a 15-year-old high school student, the week coincides with April’s new moon — when the absence of lunar illumination makes it easier to view various stars, planets and solar systems at night.

Far from major metro areas that blanket the night sky with light, the Adirondacks provide some of the most opportune viewing conditions anywhere in the eastern United States — and there aren’t many, according to Lake Placid Dark Sky Committee Chairman John Winkler.

“If you look at a map of light pollution in the United States and you look east of the Mississippi, there is no place — other than the Adirondacks and northern Maine — that is fully dark,” he said. “There’s no other place.”

Within the Adirondacks, however, the Tri-Lakes communities tend to shine the brightest at night on various satellite images and light pollution maps, making it more difficult to get a pristine glimpse of the nighttime sky. That’s one of the reasons the committee was formed.

While certain types of lighting are inherently necessary in developed areas, such as Lake Placid, there are a myriad of common-sense ways that overall light pollution can be reduced while maintaining essential and, in many cases, even aesthetic uses of exterior lighting, according to Winkler.

He said it’s understandable that people aren’t aware or considering light pollution implications when making various exterior lighting choices. That’s why the Lake Placid Dark Sky Committee and partner organizations dedicate much of their time to education and outreach.

Winkler has presented to the Lake Placid Business Association, Rotary Club, Garden Club and hosted tables at Community Day. He said the reactions are positive, receptive and oftentimes, people are surprised to learn that bulbs that minimize light pollution are easy to come by.

“When you tell people how easy it is to buy a light fixture that looks nice and is good for controlling light pollution, the lightbulb does go off — it’s like ‘Oh wow, I wish I had known that before I bought the thing that I bought,'” Winkler said.

The dark sky committee worked to draft exterior lighting codes that could be incorporated into the Town of North Elba/Village of Lake Placid Land Use Code. Winkler said the focus has been to quantify ways that light pollution can be reduced.

“Right now, the code does speak to being dark sky compliant or aware, but it doesn’t have specific, tangible and easily-measured metrics that somebody can reference,” he said. “Getting that extra specificity into the code would be helpful going forward as new projects come up.”

Winkler said it would be geared toward future projects, as opposed to making people or businesses retrofit existing infrastructure. He added that the metrics the committee looked into include total lumens per square acre of development, light color temperature as measured in degrees Kelvin and light shielding features.

“I think that if there’s one thing that’s the most important, it’s shielding,” he said. “Both for preventing the light from just shooting up into the sky and causing sky glow, but also to keep it so it’s out of line of sight.”

There is a public safety element to shielding, Winkler added — both from a driver’s and a pedestrian’s standpoint. The idea is to focus the light where it’s needed and prevent it from where it’s not.

“When you are walking down the street, (with shields) you don’t have a glaring, uncovered lighting filament going directly into your eyes, blinding you,” he said.

When it came to the light color temperature, Winkler said softer is better. He said lights that appear blue, and are over 5,000 degrees Kelvin, bring substantially more light pollution.

“That’s a wavelength that travels much further in the atmosphere and causes a lot more light pollution and is also harder on the eyes,” he said.

The committee balanced the goal of reducing light pollution with the various benefits and charm lights bring to Lake Placid, something that Winkler said was doable.

“We tried to pay special attention to all of the things that the existing land use code carves out and highlights as important to the town that are special uses, like Christmas lights and things like that,” he said. “It’s easy, and we did, to carry over all of that carve-out stuff and still provide guidelines that are more quantified than what we had previously — so following them shouldn’t detract from what people are doing with lights today. It’ll just make it so that the wasted light isn’t there.”

Winkler moved to Lake Placid from New York City. He said one of the reasons for relocating was that he was tired of the constant light and noise that comes with living in a city. As soon as he had heard of the dark sky initiative locally, it was something that he jumped on, noting that Lake Placid is in a prime position to leverage the nighttime aspect of ecotourism.

“And so why wouldn’t we, as the most prominent tourist destination in the Adirondacks, want to appeal to that set of the population who lives on the East Coast and cares about the night sky?” he said. “That’s my view and it seems like such a natural fit.”

Although details are still being finalized, Winkler said the Lake Placid Dark Sky Committee was planning events with other Tri-Lakes organizations to celebrate dark skies. Those are slated for late summer or early fall.

For more information about the Lake Placid/North Elba Development Commission, visit tinyurl.com/5y9d7twc.