Moonlight without the Moon

Light pollution, the alteration of the natural light levels in the night en vironment produced by man-made light, is one of the most rapidly increasing threats to the natural environment. The fast growth of the night sky brigh tness due to light pollution not only is damaging the perception of the sta rry sky but it is silently altering even the perception of the moonlight ni ghts by mankind. The cyclic alternation between the new Moon's dark sky wit h thousand of stars and the moonlight sky, less dark but always full of sta rs among which our satellite moves, is rapidly changing toward a perennial artificial moonlight due to the man-made light wasted in the atmosphere. Th e Moon periodically will appear inside the same perennially luminous sky fr om which stars will have almost disappeared. Here we present a map showing "artificial moonlight'' levels in North America and some statistical result s.