Light Pollution

[den]

I hope the people who were blacked out went outside that night and looked up. There are stars up there! I never realized how bad light pollution is until my trips to the UK in the 80s. A dozen bright stars and light-haze is not a night sky.

Comments

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

In the 1965 blackout there were reports of panicked calls to the police, where people were saying they were seeing these strange lights in the sky that were never there before...

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Oh dear.

Where I live now, it's a 10 minute drive to turn light pollution into a smudge on the horizon. Lights in the sky hold no fears for me.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I'm a little bit outside the downtown core of a medium-sized city, and there's a lotta times at night when I can see the Milky Way, with Main Street a minute's walk away. I like this place.

No such luck...

[blaisepascal]

It was very humid here, plus a full moon. So the sky was very hazy, even without light polution (so poor seeing, in general) and the entire sky had a heavy glow from the moon.

It's a shame, since I tried to go look while it was blacked out.

I did go camping for a week at the end of July, and I know how bad the light polution is. My favorate open globular cluster is the Pliedies, which are sometimes hard to see with the light polution. (Hmm, are the Seven Sisters visible from Australia?)

Re: No such luck...

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

They are indeed visible! There's even an Aboriginal story about them. I can often pick out most of Pegasus and Andromeda way off to the north, and if I'm in the flat country to the west on exceptionally clear nights at the right time of the year I can even see one of the stars of Ursa Major. It's the star furthest from the Pole Star.

[henman.livejournal.com]

I thought the UK was bad until I moved to Toronto!
It was nice watching the stars last night ... until the fire brigade arrived a few doors down and we were swamped with flashing lights!

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

When i was a student up in Scotland, in St Andrews, one night walking home it was an extra clear sky (prety good round there but the town did give some light pollution) and just stopped in the middle of the pavement and stood staring up enjoying it, around 1am I think.. someone walked past, glanced up and said "Yes, lovely stars tonight" in a matter of fact way. I was awestruck though!

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

This is why I go camping. Especially in the winter (well, that's the only time you _can_ go camping in florida comfortably) - a clear night, 100 miles away from the largest city in the area, clear skies.

Down in south florida it's pretty much impossible to escape the light pollution - large sprawl on the west coast, larger sprawl on the east coast - 200 miles of light pollution on the east coast - no exaggeration.

I remember when I was little staring into the sky and getting lost in the stars. I wish more kids were able to experience that now.

[chezmax]

Even with the power out, we could see a lot of stars, but not a whole lot because the moon was almost full and the air was humid enough for it to wash out most of the horizon...

I got a good view of Mars though.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

I sure did. I've been missing dark skies since I moved two years ago, so it was great to take advantage of the darkness.

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, I noticed. It was very nice. At the time I wasn't in a mood to look long, though.