The End of Night (book)
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| Author | Paul Bogard |
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| Cover artist | Tyler Nordgren |
| Subject | Night, light pollution |
| Published | July 9, 2013 (North America: Little, Brown and Company; Global: 4th Estate/HarperCollins) |
| Media type | Print, e-book, audiobook |
| Pages | 336 p. |
| ISBN | (L.B. hardcover) |
| OCLC | 862589287 |
| 551.56/6 | |
| LC Class | TD195.L52 B64 2013 |
| Website | http://www.paul-bogard.com/books-and-writings/ |
The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light is a 2013 non-fiction book by Paul Bogard on the gradual disappearance, due to light pollution, of true darkness from the night skies of most people on the planet. Bogard examines the effects of this loss on human physical and mental health, society, and ecosystems, and how it might be mitigated.
The book has been translated into Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
Bogard's book is structured into nine chapters, roughly corresponding to the nine levels of the Bortle scale, which attempts to quantify the subjective brightness and suitability for astronomy of the sky in different environments. On his use of the scale, which was invented in 2001, Bogard has said, "one of the reasons why identifying different depths of darkness is so important is that we don’t recognize that we’re losing it, unless we have a name to recognize it by."
Bogard begins at a Bortle level 9 environment, by the Luxor Sky Beam, the brightest spotlight on Earth, located on the Las Vegas Strip. He explores the nighttime landscapes of London and Paris, and examines the planning, or lack thereof, in each city's lighting. He visits locations throughout the continental US, as well as Florence, the Canary Islands, and the isle of Sark, in his quest to understand the nature of light pollution. He experiences firsthand the deleterious effects of night shift work, talks with a former prison inmate about the psychological effects of uninterrupted light, and shares his own fear of the dark. Bogard ultimately finds a Bortle level 1 environment: an environment so perfectly free of stray light that the Milky Way casts noticeable shadows.
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