The Naperville Astronomical Association has an enviable amateur stargazing center with a video telescope that can reel in views of the Eskimo Nebula or the spirals of the Whirlpool Galaxy, 23 million light-years away.
But when members want an unobstructed view of the night sky, they pack their telescopes into their cars and drive more than an hour south to a farm in Grundy County, beyond the glow in the western suburbs that blots out most of the stars.
For decades, Chicago-area astronomers have fought a losing battle against expanding light pollution from street lamps, stadium lights and floodlit car lots. Lately, though, they have been finding new allies, and a fast-growing dark sky movement is redefining what was once regarded as a mere nuisance as a serious environmental issue.
Astronomers are joining forces with environmentalists concerned about global warming, bird-watchers who warn that city lights confuse migratory species and officials eager to save energy.
"The lighting of the night sky is as important an Earth issue as global warming," said Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center who has researched links between night lighting and illness.
"We have had 3 billion years of dark nights, and 120 years of this night glow. That is profound, and we're starting to see the consequences."
In a trend that has been accelerating in the last five years, hundreds of cities, states and federal governments have enacted laws that address light pollution or retrofitted streetlights, the Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association reports. Twenty-eight states have passed or are debating laws limiting light encroachment.
Grass-roots groups are pushing the fight. The Dark-Sky Association has seen its membership grow from about 600 a decade ago to 11,000 worldwide this year. Lights Out America has brought its campaign to dim the lights for an hour and install low-watt bulbs to several major cities this year, and it is planning events in Chicago and other cities in March.
The local office of the National Audubon Society long has worked with the city of Chicago to urge high-rise owners to turn out their exterior lights during spring and fall bird migrations. After reviewing new research two years ago, the group expanded its program, asking buildings to turn off all lighting, between 4 a.m. and dawn because of new research on bird deaths.
"The building managers were telling us they were shoveling dead birds on some mornings," spokeswoman Judy Pollock said.
Advances in medicine have provided astronomers with new fellow travelers. This month, the medical journal Lancet Oncology published a study stating nighttime shift work, mostly done in well-lit places like warehouses, is a "probable human carcinogen." Also this month, an expedition under the 24-hour daylight of the Antarctic summer is helping British researchers investigate the link between glaucoma and light exposure.
For suburban astronomers, the growing interest in an old problem is welcome as their views of the skies have deteriorated with the population boom in the region.
Dave Toeppen, an amateur astronomer from Mt. Prospect, persuaded the village to rewrite its lighting codes. His efforts, which began five years ago, continue as he presses the city to limit heavily lighted signboards. Prodded by Toeppen, Mt. Prospect trustees now require new businesses to dim their outdoor lights and have given the village the authority to cite homes with glaring lights that encroach on neighbors.
By mandating hooded outdoor lights directed downward, governments can help hold back one of the modern age's most lamentable achievements: the blotting out of the stars.
"Little by little, with ordinances here in our community, we're trying to reverse the tide of bad lighting," Toeppen said.
In The Glen, a development on a former naval base in Glenview, streets were lighted with unshaded "acorn bulbs" whose glare -- both skyward and outward into motorists' eyes -- drew complaints.
"People said they flew into O'Hare and the main streets [of the Glen] were lighted up like a highway interchange," Public Works Director Bill Porter said.
The village agreed to retrofit with better lighting. The goal was to reduce glare for residents, but that dovetailed with astronomers' concerns in a way that demonstrates why interest in dark skies is growing.
In Illinois, the loss of the night sky is most obvious in the collar counties, which have developed rapidly in recent decades. Naperville lies mostly in DuPage County, where the population, now 932,670, has swollen sixfold since 1950.
At one time, the Naperville Astronomical Association's site was far from the lights of the city, but now, members must peer through the suburban glare. Its two observatories sit on a site owned by Naperville's Water Reclamation Department. Recently, as several club members gathered, the moon rose like a blood orange in the sky, redoubling the refracted light in the atmosphere.