It's hard to tell where you are, but if you're in the bay area and know enough to post what you did, you probably should also know that the city of San Jose did specifically select street lamps based on light pollution concerns from the astronomers at Lick.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-San-Jose-install-yellow-street...

https://mthamilton.ucolick.org/public/lighting/Pollution2.ht...

As a transplant, it took some getting used to, because the low pressure sodium street lamps are roughly the same color as yellow stop lights. For better or for worse, the city of San Jose has been replacing the LPS lamps with LEDs for the past 6 years, but at least they're down-facing and create less light pollution than many other options.

Closest one to where I live:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Barrens#Dark-sky_pres...

Current at-risk:

* https://www.blogto.com/travel/2020/08/torrance-barrens-dark-...

Fun fact: Asteroid 6216 was named "San Jose" for its support and cooperation with nearby Lick Observatory to reduce light pollution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6216_San_Jose

You're confusing Lick with Mt. Palomar. Lick is helped by the marine layer of fog. It's in San Jose.

Perhaps you're confusing Mt. Palomar with Mt. Wilson! Mt. Wilson is actually near LA. It had its own fire close call a few years ago.

Indeed I am.

While light pollution is a problem, with lasers and adaptive optics observations can be made. From the article:

"The solution is lasers. Lick’s Shane telescope wields an adaptive optics system, which fires a beam into the atmosphere. “Adaptive optics measures the turbulence hundreds or thousands of times a second, and then changes the shape of a special mirror, called the deformable mirror, to take away the blurring,” says Max.

The Shane telescope also has a larger mirror than Hubble: 3 meters compared to 2.4 meters. So if there happens to be a bright enough star nearby your viewing target, Max says, “you can get the same kind of spatial resolution that Hubble gets, because our telescope is more or less the same size, and we're taking away the blurring of the atmosphere with adaptive optics.”"

Lasers+Adaptive optics compensate for the blurriness induced by the atmosphere, but not for the light pollution. The whole sky glows because of it, and items significantly fainter than the glow baseline are lost, even in long exposures.

I visited La Palma in the Canary Islands just before the lockdown in Spain. La Palma has a huge observatory, and I learned that the island is a starlight reserve. They take active measures to diminish the effects of light pollution, such as using special street lights, limiting flights at night, etc.

If you ever get a chance to visit, La Palma is am amazing place.

https://www.aboutlapalma.com/la-palma-astromony.html

https://photos.app.goo.gl/JcD1bCUb1asU9VcE8

Tucson, AZ is another place that has rules to guard against light pollution. This is to keep skies dark for the nearby observatories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona#Light_pollutio...

Damn, I haven't seen Sun Ultras in a long time (I used to admin them).

On the topic of light pollution, you might be interested in Paul Bogard's The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16131044-the-end-of-nigh...