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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.'"
And then they built that super Wal-Mart 1/4 mile from my house. Now I am lucky if I can see Sirus or anything of a less than amazing magnitude.
Poor kids, I wish they could see what they are missing.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
Oh, the Milky Way at night,
Vastly over-rated sight.
Better still the suds of morn,
By which unsightly stubble's shorn.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I live in Los Angeles. One day I went up to Yosemite to hike Half-Dome. It's a long hike, so we started at 3 in the morning. When we broke out of the trees, I looked up and shit my pants.
I looked up and said to a friend. This town is so corrupt even the stars have left it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
2/5ths of Americans can't see their own toes.
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)
I can almost always spot the Milky Way.
It's usually right next to the Snickers.
By that reasoning, I suppose you could look down and see part of the milky way too.
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)
I live in NYC, here you can't even see the sun.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Yes we are in the Milky Way galaxy, so technically any nearby stars you can see are part of the Milky Way. However, the Milky Way they're referring to is a dense band of distant stars you see when looking towards the galactic core. It's visible as a band of white across the sky. There's some photo's in the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
The fact that you seem to not understand what they're referring to clearly illustrates their point. (I'm assuming that your question was serious.) Apparently you've never seen (or at least noticed) this band of stars. Do yourself a favor and go out to the mountains or desert. The beauty of the night sky in areas away from the cities is well worth the trip.
You're lucky! There were a hundred and twenty six of us living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road...
If we could start getting in the habit of focusing our lights down through the use of hoods and lamp covers we could probably make fast, cheap improvements on this problem. Light is wasted going up, with the exception of cool satellite shots showing the Earth at night. I for one would love to be able to see more than magnitude 1 and brighter stars from my rooftop in Brooklyn.
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -Hawking
Amsterdam is blessed with sufficient nocturnal distractions that not being able to see the night sky is no great hardship.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I take issue with a number of things here...
A) Is this 1/5th immobile? Can they not hop a commuter train to the suburbs or something? I'd really like to know. I know that when I go out to see Dad in Wyoming the difference is absolutely noticeable, but I've always assumed that the same could be gained by finding some road-side location out in 'the sticks'.
B) When is light 'pollution', and are we okay with (what I assume is) a situational definition of that word? Is light 'pollution' when it comes out of your headlights? Or only when Wal-Mart uses it to light their parking lot? Is there some measurable standard of 'enough' light, and the excess is 'pollution'? Or is it only 'pollution' when you want it to be dark? I'd honestly like to know...
C) What does 'the arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage' mean, exactly? Are we really weighing the advantages of light at night against 'natural heritage'? Because, from where I sit, 'living in a cave, eating only what you can kill with a pointy stick' is also our 'natural heritage'. The rest is technology at work, for better or worse.
It just strikes me as weird, and I'd love to hear voices from the other side of it.
Galaxy is greek for Milky. But then again everything is all greek to me.
Much like planet is greek for wonderer.
Go on mod me funny and informative.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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!
Real New Yorker's never look up. That's just for tourists.
Developers: We can use your help.
When did Britain get moved to a different continent? Or did we get upgraded?
no taxation without representation!
I'm selling my house in Spokane. You can generally see the milky way, and hang out with the deer and elk while you do it.
Nice spot, 10 acres of farmland within viewing distance of a lake (barely), miles of bike trails along the river, ... but I couldn't take the trade-off.
You see, to get all that you have to live in Spokane.
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.
Leela: "I don't get it."
Professor: "I'm sorry, rattaroaz, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2008 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
rattaroaz: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum."
I tried that, but they arrested my two girlfriends.
Note to astronomy guys - some pictures of what the milky way looks like with the naked eye would be very appreciated on that wikipedia page.
The panoramic shots are cool, as are the color-enhanced ones. But for all that people talk about the milky way so often, and the fact that I have seen it several times (if faintly) in person, I've always been very vague on whether I was actually seeing it because so few of the common pictures show what it'll actually look like :)
If you look at the section labelled "Age" on the wiki page, you will see a good picture of what the Milky Way looks like to most people not living in a light polluted city.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
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.
Pro-tip: turn on your headlights.
Rectum? Damn near killed em!
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
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 ;)
The statistic should be that 1/5th of the world's population lives in population dense cities that produce too much light pollution to observe the milky way at night.
MOST places in the US and Europe offer spectacular views of the night sky, including the Milky Way. Fortunately the population is not very dense except in the big cities.
When 1/5 of the world has too much light pollution to observe the Milky Way, then I will worry. 1/5 of the worlds population, no big deal. Hell, I'd guess that most of the other 4/5's of the population wish they had that problem, cause then it might mean that they have the power to run their wells, clean their water, refrigerate their food, compete for the next big call center, and maybe stop burying 1/4, or 1/3, or even 1/2 of their children before they see 18.
While I agree that it would be nice if we industrialized nations could dim it a little in our big cities so our spoiled kids can see a few stars, I don't consider it a cause for concern.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Seriously, to me this is sort of old news. Let me tell you a story;
When I was young, I grew up in a small town about 50 miles from London in the UK. We rarely left the area because we really couldn't travel much. When I was in a little older, we lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland... and finally when I was 18 I lived in London for a few years. This is significant because the first time I truly traveled outside of major metropolitan areas in my life, I was 21 and I went to Oklahoma. I was staying with friends in Chickasha, OK... and one night, I think it was my fourth night in the area we drove out to Lake Louis Burtschi, as poor college students do when they can't afford to go out and do stuff. Anyway, I recall distinctly stepping out of the car and literally had my breath taken away. My friends said I stood dead still for almost a minute, and I remember the feeling of vertigo, the feeling of depth as I stared into that starry night sky, the Milky Way clear above my head as I had seen it in books.
All my life, I had grown up seeing these pictures in books of mountains with the Milky Way shown clearly there... and all my life I had believed truly that those pictures were in some way faked to make a dramatic point. Sure, I had vaguely seen the "fuzz" of the glow of the galaxy across the sky on the clearest nights I can remember in Belfast, but never in my life before had I seen anything like it. I had never even suspected that I was able to see the sky that clearly from any vantage point on Earth except perhaps the tops of the tallest mountains... even then I doubted it looked like that. I just had no idea until I saw it first hand.
That night I stood there for the better part of 5 or 6 hours, taking in the majesty of a night sky I had never suspected I would ever see in my life, thinking that the only place I could see that would be out the window of a space shuttle (something I knew I would never do).
I'm 36 now, but that night is still vivid in my memory. It's still incredible, and still so unbelievable to me that I had the chance to see that. I have been back there since, and though it's not as clear now as it was 15 years ago, it's still an awe-inspiring sight for someone like me who has lived most of my life in suburbs. Today I live in St. Louis... we're lucky to see Betelgeuse most nights because of the light pollution of our metropolis. I know I can drive a few hours out of town and get a better view, but Missouri is too humid for a view like I got in Oklahoma.
I know how the younger people feel today... and they really don't know what they're missing. It's a sad state of affairs, and yes... one that can be rectified by getting away from the large cities if possible. But remember my example; I didn't even consider that getting away from the cities would afford me that much better a view... because I had never seen it and never encountered it. Cities are so densely packed in Britain that you'd be really hard-pressed to find a single location where you're far enough from light pollution to see that clearly. Sure, maybe the highlands of Scotland... but having been up in the highlands a few times I can say that you'd be damned lucky to get a night that wasn't overcast in most of those mountains.
I'm somewhat reminded of the people of Krikkit in Life, The Universe and Everything: They lived their entire lives surrounded by a dust cloud that obscured the night sky to the extent that it never even occurred to them that there was anything beyond that dust cloud... or even that there was a sky, as such. I think in some ways I felt when I saw the Milky Way clearly for the first time that I had spent my entire life obscured from the real night sky and as such had never even considered it's existence in the way I have since.
Now that they built a giant Lexus dealer with stadium lighting I can't even see the moon anymore.