The other night, after midnight, I went out to look at the skies. There above was mighty Orion surrounded on either side by Taurus the Bull and The Big Dog, Canis Major. And moving among the great constellations were some of the whitest clouds I had ever seen. The overall effect was ethereal.

Sadly, what I was looking at was one of the major nemeses of modern astronomy, and I'm not referring to the clouds.

The clouds have always been with us, they are part of the natural order of things and something sky lovers have always had to deal with. No, the latest archenemy of astronomy is not the fact that there are clouds, but that in the middle of a moonless night we can see them, white against a dark background.

It is what illuminates them that astronomers despise so much. The light pouring out from the cities, spoiling our skies, is what has many of us up in arms.

It is a true statement that we need some light at night as a measure of safety. Obviously, headlights help us see where we are driving, and streetlights help give our streets some semblance of security. A lit parking lot makes it easier to find our cars and makes it less tempting for bad people to do bad things. But here are some questions I have for which I have yet to hear good answers.

Do we really need to light up huge auto malls at night after hours? Is it important that everyone within a 50-mile radius of a casino has to see it? Do billboards really have to be lit from the bottom up by spotlights that could light up a passing DC-10? Is it necessary for that one neighbor across the street to have a mercury vapor lamp that literally lights half the block like the midnight sun?

The fact that we see those clouds on moonless nights means that a lot of our precious energy is uselessly bleaching our atmosphere or being jettisoned out into space. What waste!

The extent of light pollution we are seeing is unprecedented in human history. It is estimated that about two-thirds of Americans can no longer see the Milky Way! Our present generation is missing out on the spectacle of the star-studded night sky and becoming that much more desensitized to the beauties of the creation.

Do you think this year that you could help in your own small way by turning off outdoor lights when they are not needed? Can you buy lighting fixtures that only deliver light downwards where it is needed? There are all kinds of other ways to help darken our skies found at the website of the International Dark-Sky Association (www.darksky.org).

Let's reclaim our nighttime skies!