The correspondence with Stanisław Lubieniecki (1623–1675) is the fourth most voluminous in the corpus of letters of Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) – there are over ninety letters they wrote to each other between 1664 and 1673. Their positions in the learned world, however, were very unequal. Hevelius was a reputed astronomer and a fellow of the Royal Society, while Lubieniecki was an amateur interested in comets and astronomy. In this paper, I present the goals they have in this correspondence and the ways in which they tried to achieve them, and I try to explain why their correspondence was so numerous and long-lasting.
W niniejszym artykule przedstawiono problem sztucznie wywołanego świecenia nocnego nieba, tzw. zanieczyszczenia świetlnego, który to problem w warunkach polskich dopiero staje się zauważalny. Opisano historię zagadnienia, przyczyny powstawania "zanieczyszczenia świetlnego", jego rodzaje, skutki przez niego wywołane oraz sposoby przeciwdziałania. Przedstawiono nową, prostą, tanią i powszechnie dostępną metodę określania wielkości "zanieczyszczenia świetlnego", opartą na obserwacjach słabych komet, przeprowadzono testy jej poprawności oraz zaprezentowano pierwsze wyniki otrzymane za jej pomocą.
EN
The aim of this paper is the presentation of the problem of the artificial night sky lighting, the so called "light pollution", which just become appreciable in Poland. The history of the problem, causes of the "light pollution" originating, types, affects on the environment, and the methods of counteraction, were described. The new, innovatory, simple, cheap, and easy to attain method of determination of the "light pollution" quantity, based on the dim comets amateur observations, was presented. The tests of this method correctness were done and the first results were presented.