Starry skies are a vanishing treasure because light pollution is washing away our view of the cosmos. It not only threatens astronomy, it disrupts wildlife, and affects human health. The yellow glows over cities and towns — seen so clearly from space — are testament to the billions spent in wasted energy from lighting up the sky.

To help raise public awareness of some of the issues pertaining to light pollution, Loch Ness Productions in collaboration with the International Dark-Sky Association has created a 6.5-minute "public service announcement" called Losing the Dark. It introduces and illustrates some of the issues regarding light pollution, and suggests three simple actions people can take to help mitigate it.

Losing the Dark was initially created in fulldome video format for digital planetarium use. It also has been made as a conventional flat screen video, for use in classrooms, kiosks, museum theaters, and advocate multimedia presentations. Classic planetarium theaters without fulldome capability can show this version using their traditional video projectors.

More information and links to downloads at: http://www.darksky.org/losingthedark

Losing the Dark is a joint production of the International Dark-Sky Association and Loch Ness Productions.

Writer/narrator: Carolyn Collins Petersen

Audio/video production: Mark C. Petersen

Music: Geodesium

Time-lapse photography and animation: Dome3D, Loch Ness Productions

Additional imagery: NASA, DigitalSky 2, Adler Planetarium, Gregory Panayotou, Gemini Observatory / AURA, Dan Nixon /

Need-Less Campaign, Thomas O'Brien / tmophoto, Babak Tafreshi / TWAN

Special thanks: Dr. Connie Walker (NOAO) and the IDA Education committee