I find the lights of civilization on our planet comforting and beautiful. Driving late at night through sparsely inhabited country, it's cool to come across a rise and see the lights of a city gleaming. When I spent a night in a penthouse in San Francisco, the shimmering skyline from that vantage point was amazing.

All of it is the sign of prosperous humanity. It may be a bad thing for astronomers--which was Jacob's only point, and I assign no other motivation to his comment. I have no problem with efforts to help them out (changing designs of streetlights, or moving to other color spectrums). Still, in the larger sense, I could never look at the lights of human achievement spread across our planet and feel anything but good about it.

I was making a point with the photo. There are things more important than being able to see the stars.