Stars vanish from night sky as light pollution from cities, towns grows

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We are losing the stars.

Not all at once, but quietly, one streetlight, one neon sign, one expanding suburb at a time.

For most of human history, the night sky has been a shared inheritance, a source of stories, navigation and wonder.

But for many adults, the expansive skies of childhood that were bursting with starlight are no longer visible.

Most of today’s children don’t even know what they’re missing.

Outback Australia is still one of the best places in the world to see the night sky in all of its celestial glory.

But in much of Europe and North America, dark skies have almost vanished. 

More than a third of the Earth’s population — about 2.8 billion people — cannot see the Milky Way from where they live due to artificial light pollution.

To truly experience the night sky, you must escape urban glow and seek out total darkness.(Supplied: Michael Goh)

And when people can no longer look up and see the stars, something shifts.

Yet the universe leaves traces.

As some look up, others look down.

Under magnification, even the ashes of the dead can resemble distant galaxies, reminding us that we are made of the same elements as the stars.

The top image below is of magnified human ashes, while the lower images are of the Southern Tadpole Nebula, the Running Chicken Nebula and the Milky Way.   

Gabriela Reyes Fuchs viewed her father’s ashes under a microscope and found a vibrant cosmos.(Supplied: Gabriela Reyes Fuchs) The Southern Tadpole Nebula is a massive star-forming region glowing 12,400 light-years away.(Supplied: Prasun Agrawal) The Running Chicken Nebula derives its nickname from the avian silhouette perceived within its core, formed by glowing hydrogen gas and the brilliant light of newborn stars.(Supplied: Prasun Agrawal) Light pollution means billions of people can no longer see the Milky Way galaxy from their homes.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

Perhaps this is why we look through lenses, telescopes and microscopes to understand where we fit in this vast cosmos.

Mexican photographer and cinematographer Gabriela Reyes Fuchs says she has always been a visual person, looking at the world through a lens.

Gabriela Reyes Fuchs has a new view of death after examining her father’s ashes under a microscope.(Supplied: Gabriela Reyes Fuchs)

On the day she returned to her father’s farm to lay him to rest, she felt compelled to take a small portion of his ashes to examine. 

“I knew I needed to see his ashes under the microscope,” Ms Reyes Fuchs says.

“I didn’t question it. I just knew I had to do it.”

Gabriela Reyes Fuchs’s father, Anselmo Reyes.(Supplied: Gabriela Reyes Fuchs) Gabriela Reyes Fuchs with her parents.(Supplied: Gabriela Reyes Fuchs)

What she discovered has reshaped her understanding of life, death and the universe.

“When I first looked into the microscope, I discovered all these galaxies,” she recalls.

“I spent hours floating through them, racking focus. It felt like travelling inside the universe.” Gabriela Reyes Fuchs says her father’s ashes, above, are a microscopic map of the stars.(Supplied: Gabriela Reyes Fuchs)

Ms Reyes Fuchs says that as she examined the images, the quote of planetary scientist Carl Sagan — ‘The cosmos is within us, we are made of star-stuff’ — took on a deeply personal meaning.

The science behind her observations makes intuitive sense, as the elements that make up the universe — nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, and phosphorus — also form the human body, transformed by heat and time.  

Viewed through a microscope, those elements reveal familiar structures, connecting both the intimate and the vast lights of the universe.

Ms Reyes Fuchs believes there is something deeply human in that recognition — an instinct shaped by generations who navigated, wondered and searched for meaning in their lives by looking at the stars.

“I think when we lose someone, we often want to look up,” she says.

“And when the images look like stars, maybe something in our DNA remembers that.”

As light pollution spreads, future generations will see fewer stars in the night sky.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

What does it mean for humanity, then, if our 21st-century lifestyle is dimming our view of the stars?

As a child growing up on Sydney’s northern beaches, Katherine Bennell-Pegg often found herself in the garden, in the quiet of night, looking up at the brightly speckled sky. 

It’s where the dreams of the first astronaut to train under the Australian flag first took flight.

Katherine Bennell-Pegg is the first astronaut to qualify under the Australian flag.(Supplied: Eugene Hyland)

“As a kid, I used to lie on the dry grass in my backyard and gaze up at the stars in awe,” the 2026 Australian of the Year said in her acceptance speech last month.

“When I realised that those stars weren’t just pinpricks of light, but were planets and entire galaxies, whole new worlds waiting to be explored, I wanted to have that adventure, I wanted to be the one exploring them. 

“That imperative, to look to the sky and wonder, to innovate and explore, is an ancient one on this continent. 

“Australia’s First Nations peoples’ deep connection to Sky Country reminds us that looking up has always been part of who we are.” 

Space archaeologist Alice Gorman agrees.

Alice Gorman says that throughout history, humans have always looked to the stars.(Supplied: Alice Gorman and Brenton Edwards)

“When you think about humans as a species, then effectively every person who has ever lived has, at some point, looked up to the sky, whether they look up at the moon or the stars, and they wonder what it’s all about … it’s a connection to the night sky,” she says.

But as light pollution bleeds further into the darkness, more than a billion children are being deprived of the opportunity to marvel at the galaxies above them, and to let their imaginations soar.

Millions of children in Australia have never seen the Milky Way due to light pollution.(ABC News: Chris Lewis) The glow from expanding cities will make it harder for future generations to see stars from where they live.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

In Australia, an estimated 75 per cent of children — more than 3.2 million — live in urban areas where their view of the stars is being increasingly obscured by artificial light.

In 2020, UNICEF figures revealed that about half of the world’s children — more than 1.1 billion — lived in cities and surrounding areas.

That figure is expected to climb to 70 per cent by 2050.

Melbourne high school teacher and astrophotographer Liam Murphy says many of his students are surprised to learn that the Milky Way is in the sky above them.

“We’re doing our astronomy unit, and I start most of the lessons with the planetarium software up on the screen. We look at tonight’s sky [and] see what’s up,” he says.

Liam Murphy says some of the students in his classes have never seen the Milky Way.(Supplied: Liam Murphy)

“I show the kids the picture of the Milky Way, and they’re like, ‘Well, where’s that?’.

“Well, that’s in the sky.”

“No, it isn’t.”

 “Yes, it is.”

Liam Murphy says many children don’t know what the Milky Way even looks like.(Supplied: Liam Murphy)

“It used to be that everybody knew what the sky looked like because everyone could see it with the naked eye. But now you can’t, because of the light pollution.” 

Even when people think they are looking at stars, in many cases, they are seeing satellites. 

Next year it will be 70 years since the then-Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into space.

Dr Brad Gibson says increasing satellite numbers are interfering with our view of the night sky.(Supplied: Brad Gibson)

There are now about 12,000 satellites orbiting Earth, according to Australian-Canadian astrophysicist Brad Gibson. 

In less than a decade, that number is likely to balloon to about 100,000, making it even more difficult to determine if the lights we can glimpse in the night sky are actually stars.

“Think of it this way, every 10 years the number of satellites is increasing by a factor of 10,” Dr Gibson said.

Astrophotographer Leonel Padron says he is sometimes met with scepticism by those who think his imagery isn’t authentic because they have never seen a truly dark sky.

And in an age where AI imagery is rife, some believe his photographs have been created artificially.

These reactions are deeply disappointing, he says, and are indicative of the vast numbers of people who have become “profoundly disconnected from the raw, unpolluted beauty of the night sky”.

Leonel Padron says images like this self-portrait often attract suspicion because people don’t really know what the night sky looks like.(Supplied: Leonel Padron)

Renowned astrophotographer Alex Cherney says that as a child growing up in Ukraine, light pollution masked the existence of most stars.

“Looking up in a built-up area in Eastern Europe, there is nothing special up there,” he says.

“It just stopped me from being curious about it.” 

Alex Cherney says the clarity of the Southern Hemisphere sky sparked his passion for astrophotography.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

Now based in Melbourne, Mr Cherney says his interest in the night sky was piqued when his young daughter asked him to help her find aliens.

“So, we went to Mornington Peninsula Astronomical Society in Victoria and looked at the night sky there,” Mr Cherney says.

“It’s affected by light pollution, but not as much as in suburban Melbourne, and we looked through the telescope at the Orion [Nebula] and the rings of Saturn.”

They didn’t see any aliens, but that experience in 2007 ignited Mr Cherney’s passion for the night sky.

Alex Cherney encourages his daughter’s curiosity about the cosmos.(Supplied: Alex Cherney)

Over the past two decades, however, he has noticed the ever-expanding reach of light pollution.

“If you live in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, you have to travel 200 kilometres … to get outside of the light pollution and actually see the stars as they’re meant to be,” he says.

“There was the Globe at Night project that used citizen science to track the brightness of the night sky by comparing what stars people can see.

“The conclusion was that between 2011 and 2021, the average sky brightness increased 9.6 per cent per year in North America and Europe.

“If you think about that, a child born today that can see, let’s say, 250 stars in the sky, when they turn 18, that number will be reduced to 100. And that’s a scary thought.

The Milky Way by Alex Cherney.(Supplied: Alex Cherney)

“The window’s shrinking year on year. It was a lot easier to do night-scape photography 15 years ago than it is now.”

Mr Cherney says he takes his daughters to view the night sky as often as possible before it is lost altogether.

Watch Finding Stars on ABC iView

A poetic documentary exploring our connection to the night sky, its ancient stories, its modern mysteries, and how it reminds us that we are inextricably linked to the cosmos.

“You understand your place in the universe very quickly when you look at something 1 billion light-years away … and realise that those photons, they predate dinosaurs, they predate humans, they predate the continents,” he says.

“And that’s something very humbling, but also calming.

“We need darkness to see the vastness of the universe, to understand our place and position in relation to the solar system.”

Clinical psychologist Dr Simonne Cohen has seen how a sense of wonder and calm in the presence of nature can improve mental wellbeing.

She says young people, especially children, are growing up in a fast-paced, highly stimulating world filled with constant technology and instant rewards.

While many cope well, others become overwhelmed, leading to increased psychological stress.

Dr Simonne Cohen says getting out into nature and looking at the stars can help ease anxiety.(Supplied: Simonne Cohen )

“There is more anxiety, more emotional meltdowns, kids are coming home from school and just melting down over the smallest thing,” Dr Cohen says.

“I see it in my own clinical practice … the whole nervous system is over-wired.

“And that’s because there isn’t enough time in our day to just stop, pause, and reflect.”

Spending time outdoors slows the nervous system and aids wellbeing in both children and adults, according to Dr Cohen. 

“I’ve visited places that are more Third World, like … kids in the Amazon in South America, and they had absolutely no technology,” she says.

“They had the night sky. They had nature to play with. And these kids were just so happy, they were laughing, and so content.”

Dr Cohen says stars carry deep meaning in our lives, “offering hope, wonder, and perspective”.

“Teaching kids to look to the stars can be a powerful comfort, a reminder that they’re guided, protected, and never alone.

“Creating space for children to connect with that sense of sparkle and possibility feels more important than ever.” Many children cannot see the Milky Way from where they live. (ABC News: Chris Lewis)

For centuries, parents have sung the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” written in 1806, to their children.

The lyric, “How I wonder what you are”, instils a sense of curiosity and imagination that has been passed down through generations.

And for some, like retired Royal Australian Navy veteran Brendan Naylor, the habit of stargazing has been carried into adulthood.

Mr Naylor, who spent 13 years as a navigation officer, says navy crews are still taught to navigate by the stars.

Brendan Naylor says he felt like he was floating through the universe as stars were reflected in the still ocean around his ship.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

“From the very get-go, we get taught how to identify stars and how to take bearings and angles of the stars to work out where about in the world we are,” Mr Naylor explains.

But of all the evenings he spent at sea with a ceiling of stars above him, one particular night in 2015 has stayed with him.

Mr Naylor recalls being on the HMAS Perth in the Arafura Sea, which lies between northern Australia and western Papua New Guinea.

The sea was like glass, without a breath of wind to trouble the surface.

“There was no moon and everything in the sky just perfectly reflected onto the sea,” Mr Naylor recalls.

“I was the navigator at the time, so I spoke to the captain to see if we could stop the ship.”

A depiction of the view the HMAS Perth III crew would have experienced, far from light pollution, when the ship’s lights were switched off.(Image created by Chris Lewis)

The captain agreed, and for about 30 minutes, the ship was completely surrounded by floating stars.

“We turned off all the lights on the upper decks, and with the ship stopped with no ripples, all of the stars reflected perfectly off the ocean, and it felt like we were in the middle of the universe.

“The stars up above us, and stars below us. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”

For at least 65,000 years, Australia’s first peoples have been looking to the Sky Country for guidance. 

Dawn Hamlett, a Wajarri elder living in the Murchison region of Western Australia, says her ancestors would often travel at night, when the ground was cooler, and use the sky as a map.

Wajarri elder Dawn Hamlett says her ancestors used the stars as a compass.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

“They were the first astronomers. Well, I think they would have been. Because they depended on the stars,” she says.

“They had a compass in the sky, which was the Southern Cross, and that told them which direction they wanted to go. 

“The stars told us everything about what’s happening in the Milky Way; when it was time to gather different types of food, and the seasons.”

One of the most important celestial markers is the Emu in the Sky, a well-known formation within the Milky Way.

When it appears upright, it signals that emus have laid their eggs and they are ready to be gathered for food. 

Emu Rising over Lake Ninan in Western Australia.(Supplied: Greg Rowney) Tourists head into the outback to see the emu in the sky.(ABC News: Chris Lewis )

Today, this story has become widely known, drawing tourists who venture out into the country to witness it for themselves.

“The main thing now that people look for is the Milky Way, but … if there’s too much light around, you won’t see it at all.”

Landscape and astrophotographer Greg Rowney agrees, saying light pollution north of Perth is affecting areas that were once dependable vantage points for dark-sky observation.

A self-portrait of Greg Rowney looking at the Milky Way above Lake Campion, about 300km north-east of Perth.(Supplied: Greg Rowney)

“One of the places we often shoot, the Pinnacles, about two-and-a-half hours north of Perth, has changed noticeably as Perth’s northern outskirts and nearby towns expand,” he says.

“It’s no longer the pristine dark-sky location it once was.”

This is why about 16 local governments in Western Australia have implemented lighting policies to help preserve dark-sky tourism.

Wongan-Ballidu Shire President Mandy Stephenson says any lighting that the shire, located 175 kilometres north-east of Perth, approves must be dark-sky accredited.

Mandy Stephenson says it is vital to protect dark skies while we still have them.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

That means outdoor lighting must be certified by DarkSky International to minimise light pollution, reduce glare and eliminate light creep.

Tips for achieving this include using warm-coloured bulbs instead of white ones, installing motion sensors so outdoor lights only shine when necessary, and using shades above street lights that force the light downwards rather than glowing in every direction.  

“[Star-filled nights] are one of those things that we’ve grown up with,” she says.

“When you realise that some people don’t get to see stars every night, we really need to protect what we have.”

The extent to which light pollution affects humans’ experiences with the night sky was laid bare, by accident, in one of the strangest social experiments in modern times.

On January 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck Los Angeles and caused a major power blackout.

Dr Ed Krupp, director of the city’s Griffith Observatory, remembers the event well and says many residents were startled by what they saw in the night sky.

“Many people, at the quake, ran outside … and they encountered this dark sky which is unlike anything you ever get to see in Los Angeles,” Dr Krupp says.

The Zeiss Telescope at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.(Supplied: Griffith Observatory) Ed Krupp says stars “make a big difference to how we see … our place in the cosmos”.(Supplied: Griffith Observatory)

“The sky was filled with stars … and it was those stars that really unsettled people. 

“It just goes to show the bankruptcy of our astronomical experience.”

Since the mid-20th century, smog and light pollution have gradually swallowed the stars twinkling over Los Angeles.   

“We don’t know that we miss it until we get it again, and then [there’s] that reflection and perspective that comes [with looking at the stars] … that every generation before the 20th century was able to enjoy.

“Now we don’t even know there are stars out there to be seen.

Griffith Observatory sits above Los Angeles, where light pollution and smog block residents’ views of the stars.(Supplied: Griffith Observatory)

“But those stars beckoned our imaginations in the past, and they make a big difference to how we see ourselves and our place in the cosmos and our place on Earth. 

“The fact is, places where [dark skies] are preserved, like the outback, are more valuable now than they were before because they’ve got something that much of the planet no longer has.”

The Plane family from Perth knows the majesty of the outback sky at night. 

And they know its healing power.

After a couple of years of tragedy, they seek solace under the inky expanse, looking to the stars that have long since died and whose light is only now reaching us.

Brad Plane loved stargazing in the outback with his father Shane.(ABC News: Chris Lewis)

After mourning the sudden and unexpected death of one male relative, the family is again grieving after the loss of father and husband, Shane, who passed away from cancer on Christmas Day 2025.

A few weeks before Mr Plane died, the family made a special trip to Gingin Observatory, about an hour’s drive north of Perth, to spend time together under the stars.

Brad Plane says stargazing has always been part of their lives.

“It’s very important to us as a family,” Brad says.

Brad feels a connection when he raises his eyes to the night sky. He views shooting stars as signs from loved ones who have passed away.

“I know he [dad] will send us a lot of signs from the sky.”

The night sky is a celestial calendar, an intricate map, and a constant reminder that we exist in a vast universe.(Supplied: Greg Rowney)

When artificial light falls away, something opens.

Darkness becomes the moment where possibility appears, where we reconnect with the same sky our ancestors once used for direction and guidance.

We look up to whisper to the loved ones we’ve lost.

The distant glow of starlight, radiating for centuries through the darkness to reach us on Earth today, is where past and present meet.

To hold on to the night is not just to preserve awe and wonder, but to remember who we are.

Lake Ballard with artwork by Antony Gormley.(Supplied: Greg Rowney)Credits:Reporting: Chris LewisPhotography and video: Chris Lewis, Gabriela Reyes Fuchs, Prasun Agrawal, Greg Rowney, Alex Cherney, Michael Goh, Eugene Hyland and Brenton Edwards.Editor and digital production: Rachel KellyVideo editor: Anthony Scully