One-fifth of us have lost sight of Milky Way

An anonymous reader writes: Light pollution has caused one-fifth of the world's population — mostly in Europe, Britain and the U.S. — to lose their ability to see the Milky Way in the night sky. "The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way."