21–30 of 41 posts
I sincerely hope we can solve this problem of lights spoiling the night sky for everyone. Especially street lights, those are the worst. I hate having to go to a forest to be able to see the sky I could once see from the roof of my house.
Cedar Mesa, Utah: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5551249303/in/set-7...
La Sal Mountains, Utah: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114443927/in/set-7...
Comb Ridge, Utah: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6305032340/in/set-7...
Moonrise over Canyonlands National Park: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6940180396/in/set-7...
Elk Ridge campsite, Abajo Mountains, Utah: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/8762668240/in/set-7...
La Sal Mountains, Utah: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114444819/in/set-7...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd think the backcountry in any wilderness area not near a large city would be pretty good. As a kid, I loved backpacking in the Olympic National Forest (Washington state) for this reason... This is "Seven Lakes Basin", which I personally guarantee to be completely awesome: https://goo.gl/maps/pQKs5
I've been out backpacking in the wilderness plenty before. I was/am looking for something that is the least amount of light pollution I can find in a reasonable distance. There seems to be good resources out there for other attributes of an area so I thought someone might have gathered data on light pollution.
[It occurs to me that light-pollution is 5D data—geographic coordinates + incident angle/direction + intensity—so I guess they'd have to take an average intensity over the sphere or something...]
In Tucson AZ we have few streetlights. It's nice. You can take a walk and see better because your night vision is not constantly being reset. A 45min drive up any of our local mountains and the Milky Way is bright and center, satellites whizzing by. The International Dark Sky Association (unsuprisingly based here) has resources for people interested in reclaiming their night sky: http://www.darksky.org/
1,000W bulbs: Just Say No.
What amazed me the most was the number of shooting stars I saw, what I thought was a rare occurrence but if it is dark enough even the smallest particle of dust throws out an amazing glow as it enters our atmosphere.
For those of you in the Southern UK, I highly recommend a camping trip to Durdle Door. The camp site is a few hundred metres from the cliff edge and miles from any light pollution. Amazing views of the nigh sky from there too: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=durdle+door+night+sky&tbm=...
"The first effect, and I would say the most dramatic, is that it steals the sky. People no longer see the sky. There are many people out there who have never seen the Milky Way, who have never seen zodiacal light. Sometimes I ask people, "Do you know what zodiacal light is?" Three-quarters of them do not know, they have never even heard the word. It's part of something that held great significance in the past. It's contact with the sky. It's that feeling you get when you go outside on a beautiful starry night, Milky Way and all. That contact was present throughout humanity until only a few decades ago."
We greatly underestimate the fundamental and mystical implications of these changes on the inhabitants of this planet.