Image: Charliebrown7034/Wiki
New York provides its own northern lights, in a sense, as the city glows orange against a soft mirror of night sky. It's a rough place to be an amateur astronomer, as Irene Pease finds in the Physics World-commissioned video below. Yet, with some dedication and effort, it's also not impossible either. Even here darkness can prevail.The video was directed by NYC filmmakers Lucina Melesio and Aman Azhar and is a contribution to the International Year of Light, a United Nations program recognizing, "the importance of raising global awareness about how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health." And light, in the eyes of the Dark Skies Awareness campaign (and many others), is very often its own sort of pollution.A recent New York law requires new developments include shielded light fixtures, but that's just a start. Darkness will be hard-fought, though it clearly has allies.