Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared

Dates

2021 - Ongoing
Author

Mattia Balsamini
Locations Italy, Switzerland, China, Germany, United Kingdom
Recognition

Solo Exhibition at Getxophoto - PhMuseum 2023 Photography Grant

For all of us, blinded by shards from billions of artificial lights (ALAN: Artificial Light At Night), the night sky is a tarnished patchwork. 83% of the world's population has never seen the Milky Way, the galaxy we inhabit. And in megacities like Shanghai, home to the world's largest astronomical museum, 95% of stars are invisible to the naked eye. Artificial lights, even LED lights, release a blue-tinted spectrum that dazzles the nocturnal ecosystem, and damages man's circadian cycle – our endocrine-inspired rhythm of sleep and wakefulness – encouraging the grim slither of diseases such as breast and prostate cancer, diabetes and depression. Epidemiologists agree the disappearance of the night – the obstruction of darkness at nighttime – threatens us just as much as pollution, alcohol and tobacco. "We ask the Commission to put in place an ambitious plan to significantly reduce the external use of artificial lights by 2030," wrote an alarmed European Parliament in its document: Biodiversity Strategy for 2030: Bringing nature back into our lives.

But artificial light doesn’t only cause harm on earth. The multiplication of telecoms satellites creates crisscrossing beams of light that prevent astronomers studying the celestial heavens. And the natural world is suffering too: migratory birds fly off-course, insect species face extinction, and delicate leaves are completely surprised by winter. This is why defending the dark, averting its apocalypse, represents a groundbreaking battle in the ecological war we all must face. Protege Noctem documents the alliance scientists and citizens have formed to rally against the disappearance of the night and its creatures.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Valle D’Aosta, Italy. A student of the Summer Astronomy school, wanders in the dark. On the ground and on his back the laser pointers used by his colleagues to identify the stars.

© Mattia Balsamini - Rapid - eye - movement tests at the Center for Chronobiology UPK in Basel.

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Rapid - eye - movement tests at the Center for Chronobiology UPK in Basel.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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A slit in the sky marks the route of the International Space Station. The size of a football field and inhabited by an average of six astronauts, it orbits the Earth at a height of about 500km, and at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour. It completes a full circle in 90 minutes. And its trail is perfectly visible to the naked eye.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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A laser beam cuts through the Piedmontese sky and points to the heavans. In the garden of his home in Savigliano, Roberto Bonamico, a former telecoms officer, has built a private space observatory, with an azimuth dome in wood and fiberglass, internationally recognized and certified as K76. From here, as part of a large citizen-led science experiment coordinated by astronomer Marco Delbo, the beam searches for and measures primordial asteroids, which have existed since the Earth was born 4.5 billion years ago.

© Mattia Balsamini - A look into an optometry test used during sleep cycles analysis.

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A look into an optometry test used during sleep cycles analysis.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Isabel Schöllhorn, 30 years old, specializing in Optometry, wears an EEG with electrodes during a test at Center for Chronobiology UPK in Basel. The experiment on her quality of sleep will last two nights and two days.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Among the trees of the Verna wood, fireflies perform a silent love storm. Males fly and flicker. Females on the ground, sparkle light to reveal their presence. But when artificial light arrives, the magic dance is interrupted. "We are a thousand meters above sea level, unusual for these creatures," explains a guide who accompanies visitors to observe the dance of these bioluminescent creatures. "But they can no longer live at the bottom of the valley, and have adapted to the mountains."

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Hong Kong has been named the world's worst city for light pollution. Commercial and residential areas Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay are found to be the most severe areas of light pollution.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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As with humans, animals can develop cancers of the breast, prostate, skin and endocrine system based on high exposure to artificial light. Advanced epidemiological studies agree Artificial Lights At Night (ALAN) as a risk factor to health, and use night satellite photographs to identify the most at-risk segments of the population.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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The moth senses the street lamp and is drawn inexorably to its death. It is sucked into the light and begins to swirl, unable to fly away or mate. Cataloged by biologists, nocturnal insects die in their millions.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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In the German cities of Fulda, Neuglobsow, Krakow am See and Gülpe, a coalition of biologists and citizens, supported by the federal government, carries out an insektenmonitoring project called Tatort Straßenbeleuchtung, or Street lights on the crime scene. From spring to autumn, next to meadows and streams, they set up traps to learn which creatures enact their theater of murder and suicide under artificial light. They discover creatures such as moths, which are important nocturnal pollinators, and also diurnal insects including wasps, which in the luminous confusion, find death instead of rest.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Inside the Dark Sky Reserve in Rhön, central Germany. Insects rise from the river in traps laid by biologists, who will now catalog their volume and species. And a young goth girl is out, attracted by the dark. “This clear sky is perpetually resting in my mind,” she says.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Udine, Italy. zoologist Dr. Luca Lapini at the Museo Friulano di Storia Naturale, visiting a rescued bat. The European Parliament has launched a Biodiversity Strategy, which recognizes ALAN as a serious risk factor for the health of plants (for example, the photosynthesis cycle of leaves close to light sources is unregulated) and nocturnal mammals.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Standing out behind Fulda’s rooftops, and perfectly visible even from the heart of the city, the Big Dipper indicates the North cardinal point. Recent studies show that a dark night, contrary to common belief, is actually safer than the alternative. Safer for driving, dreaming and for living in general.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

© Mattia Balsamini - Nacho, a young spanish astronomy enthusiast at the Saint-Barthelemy observatory.

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Nacho, a young spanish astronomy enthusiast at the Saint-Barthelemy observatory.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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On December 7, 1972, Apollo XVII astronauts took a photo of the earth known as Blue Marble, an airy, blue image that gave birth to modern ecological consciousness. Thirty years later, in 2002, a NASA satellite reproduced the image – but this time at night – and named it Black Marble. These image inspired a groundbreaking environmental conservation movement: the protection of the dark. Even today, the Black Marble project is being constantly updated to suggest solutions for more responsible management of energy and lighting.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Negative reproduction onto paper of a FCO. Full-Cut-Off are public lighting sources capable of emitting perfectly directed, modular light beams without vertical dispersion.

© Mattia Balsamini - Image from the Protege Noctem – If Darkness Disappeared photography project

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Astronomers and astrophiles point their lenses towards deep space and find it scrawled with perpendicular stripes, like a ring-road junction at rush hour. Thousands of telecoms satellites whiz amongst the stars, disturb observations and reflect sunlight – especially in the first hours after twilight, and in those preceding dawn – scrawling their synthetic marks across the celestial skies. "They are launched in flocks, sixty at a time, and a whole night’s work ends up in the waste paper basket," says Alessandro Marchini, director of the astronomical observatory at the University of Siena. There are no international laws to protect the sky: aluminum invaders can swarm with impunity.