Who thinks orange streetlights are creepy?

[AlienGirl]

Does anyone else here get creeped-out by orange streetlights?

And of those who do, do you also get creeped out when the Moon is kind of orangey, or have nightmares about an orange Moon; and does the color orange play any general role in your dreams?

Tucker

[HEyHEY]

1. not creepy///

WHen I grew up I had white...now it's orange....my neighbourhood looks like a fucking factory

[Seneca]

2. the lemon ones are worse!

eom

[MercutioATC]

3. I hate them.

Give me the good old "burn your retinas" searing white any day.

[AlienGirl]

4. When you have nightmares, what are their usual themes?

[MercutioATC]

11. Seriously? Well, I guess I can answer that...

Nightmares (which are really rare for me) usually feature being pursued or hiding from a person or group of people who are either insane or simply really sadistically criminal. No monsters...no falling or vague fears. I'm scared of insane people who want to kill me. What does that mean?

[AlienGirl]

12. What do the people look like?

And do you know why they want to kill you?

Yes, I'm serious...it's a long story why, but I am.

Tucker

[MercutioATC]

19. Well...

White males, between 25 and 40, not really scary-looking, but not clean-shaven. Usually, I just see them at a distance or get a fleeting glimpse or hear them or "know" they're there. Most of the time it's dark, but not always. Settings can be anywhere from a warehouse to city streets to a farm in the country, but it's nearly always just me and them (or sometimes one or two "neutrals", but not streets full of people).

I always get the feeling that if I hide, they'll eventually find me, so the dreams where I hide are far outweighed by the dreams where I run and try to get away from them.

[regnaD kciN]

18. I haven't had a lot of nightmares for many years...

...but when I was younger (think 1960s), they generally involved things coming out of the sky at night. Originally, they were Soviet planes come to drop The Bomb on us (you can tell I got a lot of air-raid drills in elementary school, can't you?), then, later, it was UFOs coming to either invade or capture me.

[Syrinx]

5. One night a long time ago I was driving around a girl who was on acid

And she thought the streetlights were absolutely hilarious.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Me, the opposite

I have a strong affinity for shades shifted to the red end of the spectrum. That includes sodium lights (they're probably the ones you're thinking of).

I also have all my lights on dimmers, and dim them until the light turns orange.

My eyes are very sensitive to blue colors, and I perceive UV light as painfully bright, something my eye doctors have said was fairly rare, but not pathological. Sunlight, of course, is also painful.

I'm not sure this is meaningful at all, but it's worth mentioning now that you bring it up.

--bkl

[Atlant]

21. I think it means you're from K-Pax!

> My eyes are very sensitive to blue colors, and I perceive UV light as
> painfully bright, something my eye doctors have said was fairly rare,
> but not pathological. Sunlight, of course, is also painful.
>
> I'm not sure this is meaningful at all, but it's worth mentioning now
> that you bring it up.

I think it means you're from K-Pax!

BTW, if you're headed back there anytime soon, maybe you
can take the rest of us with you???

Atlant

[mddemo]

7. orange lights

bit of advice, dont move to Britain, all the streetlights are orange, it would drive you nuts :)

[Ivory_Tower]

8. If I recall...

The orange lights are better for the night sky. The white mercury-vapor (is that right?) lights washed out more of the night sky.

The orange lights take some getting used to (it always looked like things were on fire, to me), but the more we can do to cut back on light pollution, the better.

(/astronomy geek) (I hope I got the gist of it right -- it's been a long time....)

Haven't had any other issues with orange though -- maybe that's why pumpkins are popular for Halloween?

[Atlant]

22. Actually, that can be semi-backwards of the correct answer. :-)

> The orange lights are better for the night sky. The white
> mercury-vapor (is that right?) lights washed out more of
> the night sky.

Actually, depending on what you mean by "orange lights",
that answer is either correct or semi-backwards. The
orange lights come in two distinct varieties:

• Low-Pressure sodium lights -- These are the ones that
  appear "monochromatic" to our eyes; under their light,
  you can't see ANY colors other than sodium orange
  (yellow). (I like these lights for their funny visual
  effects; I want one of these to play with!)
  
  
• High-pressure sodium lights -- In the US, these are
  far more common than the low-pressure sodium lights.
  The lights appear sort-of "peach" colored and under
  their light, you can still see colors although the
  colors are obviously distorted.
  
  

The HIGH-PRESSURE sodium lights are broad-spectrum emitters,
giving off light of many colors (but centered around Sodium
yellow). This light is VERY hard for astronomers to
filter out.

By comparison, un-color-corrected Mercury vapor lights (the
deeply bluish lights) emit strongly in just a very few narrow
visible colors ("spectral lines"), and glowing mercury isn't
that common in the universe so those several "lines" are very
easy for astronomers to filter out.

LOW-PRESSURE sodium lights are also great for astronomers.
All of their light is concentrated in two very narrow, closely-
spaced lines that are very easy to filter out. (There's more
glowing sodium in the universe than mercury, but the astronomers
can live with the filters).

Color-corrected mercury vapor lights (that appear less bluish
than the uncorrected mercury vapor lamps) and metal halide lights
(that appear daylight white) are broad-spectrum emitters that
are also very problematic to astronomers.

So are good old incandescent (and quartz-halogen) lamps, but
these aren't nearly as bright, watt-for-watt, so they're not
used much outdoors anymore and were never that big a problem
to begin with.

Atlant

[amazona]

9. yes and yes

I've had a couple of weird experiences with orange streetlights and I had a dream involving the color orange much too involved to get involved with here.

I am not bothered by big orange Moons, however; in fact, I am very much drawn to them.


there's a streetlight shade i call purple/orange...

[Abe Linkman]

10. Biggest problem with nearly ALL so-called security lamps is

They are counterproductive because they aren't aimed down, but rather, are usually aimed either out, or aren't aimed at all. So, the area that they should illuminate isn't, and your eyes are drawn to the wasted light going OUT or uP, and it's dark down below where it should be lighted. A would-be criminal is actually protected by most secruity lights. All he/she needs is a gimme cap to shade his/her own eyes, and you wouldn't see them lurking in the bushes because your eyes would be drawn (or blinded) by the lamp that is shining out or Up.

Crazy, but then, most things in life are just the opposite of what would make good sense.

[blondeatlast]

13. You ever seen them on a snowy night?

The sky becomes forking RED from the relection of the lights on the snow.

They had them all over my college campus due to the observatories in the area.

Ya wanna talk creepy??? Sheesh--I still have nightmares about it . . .

[FloridaJudy]

14. Not in the least

Those sodium lights are not only energy efficient, but fun!

I remember riding down the street with my sister in the back seat of our car during the 50's. We grimaced at each other. Not only did our teeth glow, but our lips looked black! Talk about Goth cool...we dissolved in giggles!

And our Mother turning around snarling "Girls! Cut that OUT" made it even more hilarious.

[Lisa]

15. what I find really disturbing is when streetlights wink out ...

... just as I'm walking underneath them. It happened 3 times when I was going home one night.


Re: the colour ... actually I find it reminds me of the orange light in the corners of my parents' house at sunset. Kind of soothing. I didn't like the yellow sodium lights, until an astronomer friend explained that it confines the light pollution to one part of the spectrum so they can still use their telescopes in urban areas .... so now I think they're not so bad.

[hunter]

16. I do.

And there's one in front of my house. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night bathed in that spooky orange light, which never seems so bright once I'm fully awake.

When I was a kid, the streetlights used incandescent lights, which are very inefficient, but they were installed back in the bad old days when "atomic power was going to be too cheap to meter!" and they could pay some poor guy 75 cents an hour to change the light bulbs or drop pellets of plutonium into a big boiler.

If the poor guy died falling off his ladder, or of cancer caused by the plutonium, they could just hire another one.

Later, the city put up those awful blue mercury lights. Those were more efficient than the incandescent lights, and they didn't have to be changed so often, but they were sort of creepy, even though they did save many lives.

There are two kinds of orange sodium lights, and both are more efficient than the mercury lights. The low pressure sodium lights are the most efficient; those are the long tubular lights with the deep orange color that astronomers favor because the light is easy to filter out. The high pressure sodium lights are a little less efficient, but the color is brighter.

When I was a teenager I wrote a short science fiction story set on a planet where the natives were colorblind, and they used low pressure sodium lights for everything, even in their homes, which were underground mostly. The orange light made visiting humans very uncomfortable.

Of course, since I was a teenage boy, the story was mostly about sex, a subject which I knew nothing about. To cover up my ignorance the story was mostly about the non-humans having sex. Naked in the orange light, of course...

[regnaD kciN]

17. I used to...

I'm old enough that I remember a time when they were plain old-fashioned white. When they first started making them orange (actually, they looked more pinkish at the time), I thought it was really weird until someone explained to me that they were using a technology that was more energy-efficient. Over the years, I stopped noticing them, to the point that I would probably be weirded out by lights that weren't orange.

On the other hand, I am always struck by an orange moon. It doesn't seem frightning to me, but always makes me feel like I've been transported to an older, more rural time when people spoke of the "harvest moon."

And I've never noticed the importance of orange (or any other color) in my dreams/nightmares.

[qb]

20. Even creepier to me - street lights that turn off when I walk under them.

I've noticed this for a long time - I'll be walking at night, and every so often a light will turn off when I walk under it. I was about ready to shave my head and look for the three sixes, but decided to watch one of the lights for a while. I guess it was about to burn out, because it went on and off every few minutes.

edit - oops, sorry Lisa! I didn't get through all of the responses before I posted. It's nice to know I have company!