Light Pollution Up 16% in Eight Years — Astrophotographers Take Note

If your go-to dark sky spot from five years ago is looking murkier lately, this confirms it's not your imagination — that orange glow on the horizon is measurably worse. For astrophotographers, this is less a news story and more an accelerating location problem: the dark sites you bookmark today may not be worth the drive in another decade, which makes tools like Light Pollution Map and the Bortle scale more essential to pre-shoot planning than ever.