Protege Noctem by Mattia Balsamini

Protege Noctem is a documentation project chronicling the unofficial alliance between scientists and citizens to counter the disappearance of the night and its creatures.

Eighty-three per cent of the world’s population has never seen the Milky Way, the galaxy we call home. And in cities like Shanghai, where the world’s largest astronomy museum recently opened, ninety-five per cent of the stars are now in fact invisible to the naked eye.

Public lighting, windows, street lamps and even LED headlights emit blue spectrum light that dazzles the nocturnal ecosystem and damages the human circadian cycle, our endocrinal interplay of sleep and wakefulness, promoting the simultaneous onset of diseases such as breast and prostate cancer, diabetes and depression. Epidemiologists are united in considering the disappearance of the night as a risk factor on a level footing with pollution, alcohol and smoking.