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One Fifth of World's Population Can't See Milky Way At Night
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos Magazine: "Light pollution has caused one-fifth of the world's population — mostly in Europe, Britain and the US — to lose their ability to see the Milky Way in the night sky.
'The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage,' said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.
Yet 'more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the US population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way.'"
When I originally moved into my house years ago, I was surrounded by farmland, but in the past few years my area got built up with Shopping Centers, Neighborhoods and whatnot. The light pollution has become so bad that I don't even bother bringing out my telescope anymore on summer nights. The convenience of having many stores close is nice, but everything it comes with price and I think this one is a little bit too much. I originally moved to the area to get out of Philadelphia, now it's not much different in terms of the sky.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
I just recently got a new DSLR camera so now I'm playing around with all it's fancy features. I figured I would see if I could get a picture of the Milky Way from my deck in Cambridge MA. After processing the heck out of it I got about 20-30 stars... it was really kinda sad.
from the light pollution to really realize what you're missing. The two times I have been been in awe of the night sky were,
1. In the middle of the Atlantic on a boat
2. In the desert in Mauritania
Also on your astronomical to do list, head to the southern hemisphere. There's a whole different set of stars there. (Besides Nicole Kidman)
In our last vacation, my four-year old spent at least 30 minutes staring up to the night sky with his mouth open...
No sig for the moment.
No, I won't continue with the Texas theme song.
But I will say that having lived on Nantucket Island, New York City, and now California's Central Valley, I definitely appreciate going back to the sandbar and seeing what a night sky really looks like. I did spend a night in the Badlands of South Dakota -- and I think that is the most stars I've ever seen...it was like the entire sky wasn't black with pinpoints of light, but more of a fuzzy white with brighter spots. Truly amazing until the buffalo attack... (kidding)
In our last vacation, my four-year old spent at least 30 minutes staring up to the night sky with his mouth open...
I know what you mean. I took our daughters camping just a month ago, and the 2.5 year old asked what all the lights in the sky were. Despite that, being _my_ daughter, she was able to identify the Big Dipper and find Polaris, by herself (thank you Stellarium)! That, at two and a half!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Yeah well, I live on a mountain, can see the Milky Way most nights, get daily mail & UPS & FedEx service, have my choice of 2 decent broadband services, can get over-the-air DTV, and am only about 1/2 mile from a paved (but mostly unlighted thank goodness) road. Granted, shopping is not so close, 15 minute drive to a quick-mart, 30 minutes to anything substantial--such as Costco, Safeway, Home Depot, major mall, excellent restaurants, the state university, or several medical centers. Oh woe is me, deprived of freedom and comfort ;-)
Of course brutal high winter winds, deep snow, and spending lots of quality time with a chainsaw are not for everyone. But I love it!
What was really amazing was once I went camping with some friends up in the mountains and at the time someone had the right contact and we were able to borrow a piece of Gen 3 night vision. Lying on the ground in the mountains with a high quality image intensifier was pretty crazy. You could see an almost continuous stream of meteors as well as more stars then I ever imagined.
I drove out west a few years ago. Took 140 out through southern Oregon. It was just BLACK. No moon, no lights, nothing but starlight.
Once I got up in the mountains a bit I pulled off and just looked at the stars. It was amazing. I must have spent 4 hours out there just looking up.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
My family has lived in northern NJ for most of my life. My dad went out to visit friends in Arizona a few weeks back and he returned home gushing over the natural beauty. When he started talking about all the stars at night, I asked him if he noticed the white cloudy streaks across the sky. When I told him what those were he was astounded. Its the first time I ever saw someone literally star-struck.
I did pretty much the same thing. I went camping and saw the milky way for the first time. In my 30's.
Honestly - my first words once I saw it were "What the hell is that?"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That reason alone is why I like the vast nothingness of living in west Texas, you can see and actually use human night vision because there isn't anything around to be a light pollutant, downside being there is no major cities and have to drive nearly 40mi to work.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
While it is a sad fact that you can't watch the night sky a lot of places (and it is - I remember taking a road trip from Chicago up to Wisconsin one night to watch a meteor shower), it seems to be an unfortunate necessity. Here's an analogy for those who don't get the point. If you've ever been camping, you know that if you want to stargaze, you have to wander away from the campfire. If its a group of 5 or so people camping, its a small fire, and it doesn't take you long to meander away, look up in awe, and wander back. Now increase your camp size. Now its fifty people. You have bigger fires, and probably more than one. You have enough people that at least one fire is burning all night. Increase size by another factor of ten and you find more fires. Now you probably qualify as a community. You probably have specialized fires for a blacksmith or other craftsman. You likely have dozens of fires, a good many of which will burn throughout the night. The distance you must walk increases proportionately. Now we're going to make the jump. With 10,000 times the residents of our hypothetical community, a large city would have 1000s of fires (now electric lights) to provide security. At this point - one has to travel a significant distance to really get a good look at the sky (from downtown Chicago, the distance is approximately 80 miles if you're traveling north). Yes it's sad - but in order to maintain dense civilizations that give us all the things that better the human condition, we must sacrifice some of those things. And as others have pointed out, it's not as if those things are completely gone. Take a bus or a train ride. Drive out to the middle of nowhere.
For me the best thing about being able to see the Milky Way is the sense of perspective you get from the realisation of what it is you're looking it in relation to where you are. Next time you get to see the Milky Way, think about how the galaxy is in a flat-ish plane, and how you and the band you are seeing are both in the same plane. Once you think about it, you mentally orientate yourself in this plane and it starts to mess with your perception of what's "up" and what's "down". The discrepancy between the local "up and down" that you experience on Earth and the bigger "up and down" you see from the Milky Way puts things into perspective in quite a powerful way, in that you stop seeing the sky as a big mass of stars and start to see how you + the Earth fits in to the bigger picture. Of course this may all be obvious to a lot of people here on /. but it isn't to most non-nerds, so if you're on a camping trip and want to impress your mates (or a girl..), try this, it works great ;)