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Atlas of Worldwide Light Pollution
mgarraha writes: "Researchers at the University of Padua and NOAA have analyzed DMSP data to produce a new atlas
of night sky brightness due to artificial lighting. Previous maps only showed the distribution of light sources. Their
paper
will appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Here is an AP article."
I notice that there are chunks of the middle east and northern Africa that have been erased. Political lines are even gone. Is this a mistake, or are we protecting some valuable light pollution data, here?
Odd.
Hmm...They are spending 3-4 times the markup on a SUV and $250 more a month in operating costs than a comparable car. Given that 85% of them aren't being used for what they were designed, but as a commute/basic transportation vehicle instead, I would certainly say that their owners have more money than brains.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The reason for this divide is the large pool of relatively warm water to the south -- the Gulf of Mexico. Frontal systems crossing the midsection of the continent are relatively moisture-starved until they can tap the much higher precipitable waters in the atmosphere influenced by the Gulf.
In spite of the govt's effort to populate the drylands of the West in the late 19th century, Ma Nature played her winning card with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Now, even though the high plains are intensively farmed once again, it's only because of powerful electric pumps which will deplete most of the Ogallala aquifer in the next 20-50 years. After that, the left hand side of that line will be really dark.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
*black stare*
Pardon me while I laugh hysterically at that comment. Yes, American air is so much cleaner than the air in the nonindustralized world. (Including parts of Commiela--er, China.) Of course, I suppose it's obvious -- what with all the smog warnings they face in the third world. It is truly terrible that parts of their population can't leave the house due to air polution generated by all those consumer automobiles and industrial infrastructure they don't have. Riiiiight...
BRx ;)
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Guess I wasn't clear in my comment. I was talking about pollution in general... most of that electricity is produced by coal, and it is wasted so carelessly. I don't think of light as being pollution until I'm far away from it, and that's not often.
The worst, it seems to me, are large car dealerships.
IDA also likes to talk about gas stations. Some are more brightly lit at night than most offices are during the day! It's as if each gas station feels a need to light itself more brightly than its neighbors, assuming a correlation between foot-candles and sales revenue. I think I will start boycotting the worst offenders just to be contrary.
Website using CGI script to estimate light pollution:
http://www.darksky.org/ida/darksky/
Java Applet to estimate light pollution:
http://www.darksky.org/ida/darksky/darksky.html
To help you use the above tools, you'll need to know your latitude and longitude in degrees. Just type in your zip code at the bottom of this page:
http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl/
When converting latitude and longitude for use in these tools, use a negative number to denote South and West (W); use a positive number to denote North (N) and East (E). For example, "49.147247 N" = "49.147247" and "73.996206 W" = "-73.996206".
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
I couldn't agree with you more. When I was a young teen, I lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Because I had such and interest in astronomy, they allowed me purchase my first telescope, a 4 1/4 inch reflector from Edmund Scientific. I could go out into my back yard on almost any given night and have a clear sky (weather permitting, of course) and see most of the stellar sights. It was amazing and awe inspiring. We'd go to farmlands of Lancaster and it was just like you could fall off the Earth.
Today, I live even further in the "country" and can see almost nothing. Yes, there are a few nights when I can see the stars, those are the nights of power failures. It's very sad. As real-estate developers continue to build larger, more luxurious homes with overzealous lighting in already heavily populated areas or buy out the precious open space, the situation just keeps getting worse.
In the 60's and 70's, the sky was still pretty amazing. No wonder we wanted to go into space. Now, we look up and it's not quite so awe inspiring...sorta like a polluted beach or something. "Who wants to go there???" we ask.
People wonder what the big fuss is all about. But, as the previous poster stated, it truly is a humbling experience to look up and see the heavens as our forefathers did hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.
In some respects, the Californian's are lucky. With the rolling blackouts, maybe they'll get a glimpse to see what we are all missing.
I went sailing round Britain a couple of years ago, even a few miles off shore (about 10), was just amazing.
Here in the UK there is almost nowhere devoid of light (desert light), as you are never really more then 20 miles from a town. Most of the land (especially here in the north west) is disgustingly light, you're lucky to see venus and mars, let alone anthing bigger. I go to Exeter Uni and I was amazed the first night i was there walking back from the pub - even a mile out of town, on a large campus, you could see so much more then near Manchester.
But nothing will beat the boat.
Regarding the map - what is the lights in the North Sea? Oil Rigs?
I doubt econoboxes are driving insurance rates up. The insurance industry has gone back and forth over this (for higher rates: safety, theft, higher liability, cause more deaths, etc.; against: safety for occupants). Allstate and Progressive charge more for SUVs while State Farm gives them a discount. Given that they waste about $250 a month on ego. For people to claim that SUVs are safer, they are only looking at from the aspect of being an SUV occupant in a crash. They are actually dangerous if you are in a car and are hit by one. Given that SUVs are less maneuverable and take longer to stop due to their mass, you probably have a better chance of avoiding an accident in a car. Since 85% of them aren't being used for what they are designed for, it is a waste. For most people, having a SUV in a metro area is just plain DUMB (let's have one person commute ina 10-15mpg vehicle, take up two parking spaces, or can't fit in some parking garages [a guy at work can't park his Excursion in the garage because it's too tall]). I can think of better things to spend my money on.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
this "light pollution" is just a problem made up by do-gooders.
Well, it's mostly caused by wasted light. Most of the light that actually comes out of a street fixture goes straight up into the air, where it does no one any good. That's a tremendous amount of wasted energy. The light bulb's efficiency sucks already. But now we have to make it put out more light just to see what we're doing on the ground. When headlights (which on EVERY SUV in the country are TOO BRIGHT and pointed up TOO HIGH) shine into a driver's eyes, he has more trouble seeing the road. That's actually dangerous. There's a type of headlight that's made in Europe, (my car aficianado friends tell me) which focuses a far sharper cone on the road and works about a thousand times better. They are not permitted in the US because the DOT standard is "good enough."
All in all, light pollution, besides ruining the night sky for astronomers and amateurs alike, is a pretty important topic. Our energy costs could go down . . . oh yeah. I forgot, that would hurt the oil com^H^H^H^H^H^H^Heconomy.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Compare light to population and no one should wonder why the US is the biggest polluter in the world. Put together the light intensity of China, India, and Indonesia, and you've got half the population of the world, yet they still put off less light than the NorthEast corridor of the US. That's 3,000,000,000 people to 60,000,000.
ulster.net? I guess that means you're in .uk? Try taking a street address of some place in Texas (Dell or Compaq would be a good start), plugging it into mapquest.com, and zooming out. Then click around in various directions and see how they correspond to the light pollution map. And by the way folks, this map is supposed to be a light pollution map, not a light source map, so that's why there are all these great blobs, including ocean areas.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I feel kind of ignorant, but what's that huge bright spot off the coast of Argentina? It looks too big to be the Falkland islands.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
One thing to point out, is that the map is using mercator's projection (a way of making a sphere look like a square on a map) and it makes things near the equator a lot smaller than the land far from the equator. This makes places like india, australia and the malasia area a lot smaller compared to europe, canada, and northern US. Those cities in australia, for instance, are a lot larger than some of the canadian cities shown, yet it looks like they give off a heck of a lot less light. I don't think it is the amazing lighting technology they are using.
According to this article, an SUV owner spends an extra $100-$250 per month compared to a regular car in just operating costs on top of the extra cost of the vehicle. It would be better to put this in a retirement fund. Considering that 85% of these vehicles are never used for the conditions they are designed for, that really is a waste. All for ego.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Also note that the London-like lights near Nigeria are actually in the Gulf of Guinea.
There are lights in the North Sea, though I can write those off to drilling.
Anyway, quite an interesting idea. Some cities are easy to pick out, as is (for example) the Lower Nile and the associated delta.
In response to another poster, the entire world is not included in this atlas. If you look closely at the big world thumbnail, you can discern the areas of the world that they've actually surveyed. Apparently they gave low priority to oceans, Siberia, and Canada.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
It's a map of light sources, and shows some really interesting structures. The Nile is much brighter than the rest of Egypt, the central U.S. is a grid of cities, and there's a railroad stretching across Russia to the Pacific Ocean.
A small version of the image was an astronomy picture of the day last November (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html), and a larger version of the image is also available (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earth lights_dmsp_big.jpg). There's a short writeup at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lights/.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
If we are seeing so much artificial lighting from space, then it says something about the lighting used. If the light sources were only pointing their light towards the grounds, using shrouds to avoid upward distribution of light, then we should see a darker night view. Also, any light source that can be seen from space is probably also using more energy than necessary. Being environmental friendly is not always a question of finding an alternative, but simply using what we already have in a smarter way.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Disclaimer; I'm an amateur astronomer and a member of the Int'l Dark Sky Association. The thing that drives the light pollution activists most nuts is that this is nearly all waste. The majority of lights, and nearly all of the lights that you see in situations like this, are badly designed lighting fixtures that spill much (sometimes more than half) of their light uselessly into the sky. People put in lights to illuminate buildings and roadways, then they use crappy fixtures that send more light into your eyes than onto the intended target. Bad lighting is sometimes worse than no lighting at all. I've certainly driven down roads where I could see better after I get out of the lighted street area, because of the glare from the lights directly in my eyes. I've also seen really bad flood lamp security lighting where a robber could walk right up to the house and not be seen, because again, the lamps are glaring in your eyes so bad you can't see in the shadows. It's this kind of thing that gets me going. That, and people that are so scared of the boogeyman that they have to have several thousand watts of lights on their property up all night long.
karma capped
Fishing. Massive fleets use massive amounts of light at night to attract fish. In the Falklands, they don't fish it themselves, but they make hellalotta money off the licenses. It's a rich area (fish-wise).
Here's a good site about Texas highways.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The comet was Hale-Bopp. I live in Los Alamos, elev. 7200 feet. If you are willing to drive for about 20 minutes, you can be 800 feet higher, in the middle of the Jemez Mountains, and quite separated from manmade lights. The night sky -- the real night sky, not the four stars and an airplane that the city-dwellers get -- is staggering. The astronomers are fighting a losing (lost?) battle, but I am glad I have seen just where we fit.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Doh! That should be "cui bono?"
I wrote parts of this stuff
Yes, I noticed that. I find it very hard to believe that the Falkland islands are one of the brightest spots in the southern hemisphere - does oil drilling really produce so much light? I used to live in Denver, and so I find it hard to believe (after seeing the excess there, and the lack of stars) that the much smaller cities of Calgary and Edmonton further north are so much brighter. As for the darkest place on earth... try the south pole in winter.
This is a picture along the same lines, only IMHO more awe-inspiring.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
God forbid people actually do good...
That's a part of it. They *don't* learn. They just jump in it and drive it like they would a normal car w/o realizing that it is more likely to tip over due to the higher center of gravity or that it takes longer to stop because of the increased mass. I would see this all the time before the SUV craze with guys and their 4x4 pickups. Combine the over confidence produced by SUVs and the 80% greater chance that the occupants of a car hit by one will die, you can certainly see why many people don't like SUVs. Hell at least truck and bus drivers have to go through some form of training.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Indeed. It would show that the 3rd world countries getting a free ride in the Kyoto treaty are the real polluters in the world these days.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I wish this were true, but it isn't. All you have to do is take a walk in any U.S. city, and you'll see people deliberately choosing wasteful vehicles, parking them in front of homes or offices with deliberately wasteful landscaping, living deliberately wasteful lifestyles. By now all Americans know how wasteful they are, but choose to do nothing about it. In fact, we have a tendency to stigmatize those who choose not to deliberately waste resources.
As far as intelligent choice and design not being free, that's true. Intelligent choices and designs are usually a win for the consumer because water wise landscaping, or sky-friendly/good neighbor lighting and efficient vehicles cost the same or less to install/acquire and cost far less to maintain.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Northern Canada is so dark that the researchers forgot it existed.
driving up auto insurance rates by making yourselves more vulnerable to injury
Wow. Let me tell you a story about four fucking wheel drive. About ten years ago, I was driving through Kansas in November or so. Doing 70 mph, we drove onto an inch-thick sheet of ice, rather suddenly. The wind was chilling the road, and all the melting snow suddenly became solid. The car in front of me (just a car) started fishtailing. I tapped my brake ever so lightly, not yet realizing my peril, and I was fishtailing too. Well the car in front of me lost control and went off the right side of the road, flipped upside down, blew his front and rear windows out, and landed sitting upright. Screaming kids, stunned drivers. I went off to the left, but managed to keep the car upright, and safely stopped. The 18-wheel truck behind us managed to come to a safe stop as well.
After I talked to the driver of the car, and made sure they were all alive, we drove to the next town to call the police (this was before every pinhead had a cell phone in his back pocket) and for the next hundred miles I counted a four-wheel-drive vehicle tumbled over on the side of the road every three miles. I only saw one or two regular-sized cars. Almost without exception, the people who misjudged their driving abilities, their speed, and their car's traction, were driving a hopped-up SUV or light truck of one kind or another. I saw maybe three or four regular cars. The rest of us, not having this blind belief in the indestructibility of our vehicles, drove slowly and cautiously. But the SUV assholes roared past us all, and a good number of them ended up inverted in a ditch. So DON'T TELL ME about how your SUV is so fucking safe. I laughed as I drove past some of those people. I laughed the fuck out loud. You are buying the DELUSION of safety with an SUV.
My original post had nothing to do with the fitness of these cars. I just made a note that the lights were pointed higher than they needed to be. I will point out that I have yet to be blinded by the lights of a bus or 18-wheel truck. I think because they're correctly configured. It's as if the SUV designers sat down in a smaller car, right in front of the SUV, and designed the lights so that they could not help but annoy the driver in front of them.
People wouldn't hate SUV's so much if their designers and owners didn't make such a point of being arrogant about them. I can't tell you how I long to go up to a Jeep and paint in big bold letters on the back windshield: "No, it's a penis thing, and sadly, I do understand."
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
All living things live at the expense of other living things. Life is an arms race and I intend to win for as long as I can.
And then you'll lose, but they'll be no one left to be the victor. And with everyone treating this "arms race" like a sprint, they'll be the loser sooner than they think.
I want to win for a long time, but the way to win is not to destroy as quickly as possible.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Falklands have been mentioned, of course.
But the really odd thing is the *huge* patch of fuzzy light just north of the Outer Hebrides, North-West corner of Britain.
It's roughly where I'd expect the Faeroe Isles to be. The Faeroes are a small cluster of a dozen or so very small islands.
And before any irate Faeroese start to hassle me, I'm from a very small island off the NW of Britain myself!
I have friends who grew up here, who never saw a proper night sky. I convinced one of them to drive up a nearby mountain with myself and a couple of friends. She stepped out of the car and then stepped right back in, terrified by the stars.
There aren't any lights shining directly into my window. But I still can't sleep without the curtains drawn.
Mockingbirds start singing at 2 A.M.
Staples Center decorates itself with blue lights illuminating to top floor from below. You can see the blue light reflecting off the clouds, even if you drive two miles away and face away from Staples Center.
Reducing light pollution doesn't have to mean turning off lights. It can be as simple as installing a reflector above outdoor lights, so that light does not spill needlessly into the sky. This will also make your lights effectively brighter. Most cities are using shielded street lamps already, but I still see a lot of shopping malls and companies lighting their parking lots with un-shielded, 10,000W xenon lamps. That's just unnecessary.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
You're just one more person with an agenda claiming unrelated benefits for compliance ... After reading this story, almost everyone will forget about it, because it's really not very important.
Perhaps you should stay more in tune with current events. Like the power crisis in California. Using less energy is not an unrelated but a pretty direct benefit.
The folks up in Clagary thought so, as you can read here. They expect significant savings in energy by changing to full cutoff light fixtures.
A similar law recently passed in Connecticut and another is awaiting the governer's signature in New York.
Light pollution also takes its toll on the environment in more subtle ways then wasted energy.
From a story at ABCNews.com:
"Darkness for Health
Scientists have now discovered that only when it's really dark can your body produce the hormone called melatonin. Melatonin fights diseases, including breast and prostate cancer. "It turns off the cancer cells from growing," says Joan Roberts, a photo biologist. But if there's even a little light around your bed at night, your melatonin production switches off. "So there may be this natural way that Mother Nature has given us, that is, dark night to keep certain cancers under control," Roberts says. Even watching TV turns on other immune system hormones that should be active only in daytime. They get depleted, and you're more likely to get a cold. Nature needs darkness, too. The immune systems of animals grow weak if there's artificial light at night."
Not getting cancer seems like a pretty significant benefit.
Light pollution also has adverse effects on migrating birds and plant life (the plants can't track the natural light curve and don't properly prepare for winter).
Interested readers my wish to check out the International Dark-Sky Association for more info on light pollution and its effects.
Steve M
The maps's a bit wierd. What's all that down near the Falkland islands? It's almost all sea down there?
;)
Also, look near south west Kashmir, it reckons the area is as light as much of Europe.
Nigeria looks pretty light near the coast too - spending all that oil money eh?
It's interesting to pick out places - Cairo and the Nile valley in Egypt. Around Bangkok and further south to Kuala Lump and Singapore. Also the sultan in Brunei is leaving his lights on a bit too much
Tibet must be the darkest place on earth I reckon. Then again, maybe Somalia.
Jamie
You didn't have to go to so much trouble just to nag me.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I think they wrap the sheep in aluminum foil (shiny side out) to keep them fresh.
A couple of points:
(a) seeing the universe laid out for real is awe-inspiring and more than a little humbling. I think that if more people were to see the real night sky more often, there'd be a significant attitude change. When you realize just how insignificant and impermanent we humans are, the bullshit in life isn't so important any more.
(b) street lights actually increase crime rates. No one wants to wander the streets in the dark, it's a bugger to break into a house when you can't see what you're doing, and it's difficult to be unseen when your flashlight turns out to be the brightest thing in the neighbourhood.
(c) if you really want to be impressed, take up backpacking and head into the mountains. There are some remote areas that make the normal "real" view from out-of-town look about as cheesy as the out-of-town view makes the in-town view look!
(d) in particular, aim to be in the mountains during a meteor shower. Ye godz!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Funny how the trailors and buses don't blind me when they're behind me. But I guess they have better things to spend their energy on that ultra-bright bulbs.
But hey, "jealous of the well-to-do", "driving up auto insurance rates"... Thanks for spelling out your priorities in life. And I expect a thank you when you're allowed to keep up your lifestyle because someone else thought to fix the problems that threaten to end it.
The enemies of Democracy are
This is due to other atmospheric hazes -- in Chicago there's all sorts of moisture in the air and other aerosols that reflect the light pollution back to you when you're looking up, thus making it harder for you to see stars. But under clean air there can be a huge amount of light pollution around you and it won't affect the sky brightness very much at all.
I've seen the Milky Way from the city of Tucson, one of those very bright spots, but never from my home of St. Louis despite the fact that they're both hopelessly light polluted, and this is why.
I think an atlas of the worldwide pollution would be much more interesting. Especially in a time when the Kyoto Treaty is dangling. Pretor
> another liberal myth
Well, I'm not a liberal (as my views -- not expressed here in detail -- on gun control and other issues would attest. But there's a bit off the human condition, the romance of the skies, that is destroyed by light polution. A story from my childhood:
I grew up on a farm in an area that, on the current referenced map, is light green. In the 1950's the area, like so many others, would have been black (had the technology for such an image existed).
It was corn harvest time in the midwest, a cold November night. I, a boy of about eight years, was holding the flashlight to help my father back up a wagon-load of corn to the elevator (to the urban dwellers, the term 'elevator' also refers to a sort of conveyor belt thing that lifts the grain to the top of the storage bin).
But boys will be boys (or, children, as it were -- no need to discriminate here), and the onyx sky overhead, embedded with diamonds, beckoned.
I knew at the time that the stars were far away, far farther that I could, at that time or any time within my reach, hope to travel. But I knew I could go there in spirit. And I knew a way...
I raised the flashlight and aimed it at a promising star; I then moved the beam outward in a spiral path to cover as much of the cosmos as possible. This gesture, I knew, would not redound to me in any way during this life.
But I knew then, and still know, that this beam -- four decades now on its illimitable tour -- still travels as _my_ message to other worlds.
And this, apart from astronomical considerations, is the magic that light polution destroys.
The GOOD news in New York State is that both the State Assembly and State Senate have passed anti light pollution bill. It's waiting for the Govs signature. It requires full cutoff lights on Govt projects, and outlaws light trespass
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
And Americans PAY MORE to be wasteful. They've accepted the higher cost of waste. Why can't you accept that?
We do pay more. But if you think the only cost of being wasteful is some extra cash out of your paycheck, you are sadly mistaken. If you think you are the only one who pays the cost for your waste, then you are even more sadly mistaken.
You see? Your have to pay for what you want (light hoods). Let us pay for what we want (SUVs).
Hm. How long would it take for the light hood to pay for itself, because you can use a bulb half as bright (because all of it's light is hitting the ground, instead of half shining into space)? Not only from a monetary standpoint, but from the standpoint of conserving our energy supply. What I want gives us more energy, and saves us money (especially if it is a street light, paid for by your taxes).
But how does your SUV pay for itself? Maybe you think the extra monetary cost is worth it for the convenience or whatever the supposed advantage of an SUV is. But what about the extra fuel consumption? How is your SUV worth the extra cost to our (meaning everyone's) fuel supply?
You see, it isn't so simple as "you do what you want, let me do what I want", because what you do affects everyone.
Now before you dismiss me as a self centered American bastard. Know that we could conserve 95% of all water by recuclying and using (including for drinking) so-called gray water (recycled from sewage).
As a Boy Scout, I learned how to survive by distilling my own urine (though in a true survival situation, you could drink it straight up). I have no problem with this, and the existence of a stupid law prohibiting it doesn't surprise me. Yet another thing that needs to change, no surprise.
And how does this have to do with you not being a self-centered American bastard? ^_^
There's more to the equation than "conservation". People are living things that want to live confortably. And comfort requires waste. It is not wrong to want this, either.
It's not morally wrong to want to live comfortably, this is true. I myself want to live comfortably.
It's wrong in a factual sense to think that living comfortably requires waste (at least to the insane degree of current times). In fact, the opposite is true. Living comfortably requires that we not waste, so that we can continue to live comfortably, as can our children. We are either going to learn this, or we are going to stop living comfortably.
The enemies of Democracy are
I live in the murky Eastern United States and if I can see a half a dozen stars from my backyard it's a good night. A few years ago I spent six weeks at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and one night several members of my team drove out to a remote corner of the site to take a picture of one of those comets that was big news in 1996 - I forget it's name. I thought the comet would be the high point of the night. It wasn't. Folks, when you are laying on your back looking up at the whole Milky Way splayed out above you, and you can really SEE that thing streching across the sky, it is a truly life humbling experience you will always remember. You almost think you could fall off the planet into the void. There is one hell of a lot more to see out there than a screen resolution of 800x600 pixels will ever show and it is worth the effort to get to dark skies to see it.