Blinded by the light: how skyglow pollution is separating us from the stars

Light infrastructure has expanded alongside population growth but it's not only star gazing in jeopardy - cultures, wildlife, science and human health are all threatened

On a clear dark Queensland night in 1997, Brendan Downs was staring up into the cosmos alongside a band of other amateur astronomers. He trained his telescope on a galaxy called NGC 6769, floating more than 169m light years away, and took a picture.

I had a reference image that I had in a book at the time, and I visually compared the object on the screen to the object in the book," he says. I counted the number of stars I was looking at."