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World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

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Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#61

Post by daedrdev »

exe34 wrote: post #51
thereisnospork wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it you think families get power, goods, and services? Ammonia makes fertilizer - this plant will help feed millions, dropping food costs. Even if the power this plant is generating won't go directly to families, it will be going into the things they eat and the things they buy in place of power they can use directly.

is this the last place on earth to build that kind of industry?

I think its fair enough to not build it here, but everywhere there will be arguments made against all projects so it can get old fast

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#62

Post by madaxe_again »

Daub wrote: post #40

When I lived in the Welsh countryside, there were occasional nights where I could not see my hand in front of my face. The requirements were that it was new moon, and that there was slight fog. We also lived deep in a valley, which helped. I had great fun navigating my way to the local pub in complete darkness. The odd thing is that when I recount that experience, some people refuse to believe me. Of course they are…

I live that experience daily. I live in a very remote corner of Portugal - we are between bortle 2 and 3 - in the bottom of a deep, steep valley.

And yes - when it’s a new moon and the haze from the river blots out the stars, the experience is quite akin to having gone blind. In fact, it’s so dark I’ve used some of those nights to develop film at the outdoor sink.

One thing I’ve noted is that wildlife needs to see just as much as we do - I mean, obvious, right? - but those nights are always dead silent. No birds, no insects, no rustles of this that or the other in the undergrowth. Every little noise one makes seems an affront to the cloying, thick darkness. Perhaps it’s the same instinct at play.

My place in wales used to have dark skies, even fairly recently - but LED street lighting along rural roads has put paid to that. I earnestly don’t understand why a lane that sees zero foot traffic and perhaps one car during darkness hours needs a streetlamp every ten meters - while waste collections only happen every six weeks.

Ah, I have become a grumpy old astronomer.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#65

Post by Dylan16807 »

nichos wrote: post #57
exe34 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know of any Americans that advocate for shooting of school children.

They said it's low importance to a ton of people, not that those people want the opposite.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#67

Post by Dylan16807 »

watersb wrote: post #59

On another piece of the electromagnetic spectrum, the ALMA radio telescope is also in the Atacama desert, north east of Paranal. The government agreed to a radio quiet zone in the areas surrounding ALMA. But now there's Starlink and other satellite constellations coming on line at an unprecedented pace.

Are those satellites broadcasting while over those areas? I don't see the connection here.

In fact it looks like there's extra effort to let them keep running without causing problems https://public.nrao.edu/news/astronomers-satellite-internet-...

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#70

Post by SiempreViernes »

modeless wrote: post #28
culi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just about getting rid of the last place on earth you can sometimes get a truly dark sky. This is about progress itself > Since its inauguration in 1999, Paranal Observatory, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has led to significant astronomy breakthroughs, such as the first image of an exoplanet and confirming the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The Nobel Prize in Physic…

It's not literally the last place on Earth with dark skies. It's just one place with dark skies where they built a telescope. This isn't about protecting the sky and it's not about "progress", it's about protecting an investment of money in a telescope. The price of launching giant telescopes to space is set to plummet in the next few years with Starship and New Glenn coming online. IMO we should be focusing on that…

No, but it's one of three places on Earth that have dark skies this good.

The fact you don't know Paranal host many more than "one telescope" doesn't surprise me, as your are obviously very ignorant of modern astronomy.

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