What cities would look like without light pollution

[cathmom]

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/03/darkened-cities/?utm_source=smithsoniantopic&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130331-Weekender

 

I thought this was cool and just spent 15 minutes explaining light pollution and latitude to one of my 7 year olds!

[Parrothead]

Cool.

[AdventureMoms]

Wow, those are beautiful photographs! Neat idea!

[Jilly]

Cool. Thanks for sharing.

[Mothersweets]

How beautiful!

[Twigs]

Thanks for sharing. It makes me sad that I am unable to see stars like that. In fact, I almost do not believe you can actually see stars like that. :sad:

[Amy in NH]

Thanks for sharing. It makes me sad that I am unable to see stars like that. In fact, I almost do not believe you can actually see stars like that. :sad:

 

Can anyone here see stars like that? I live in a dark rural area and, although we have a beautiful night sky, we don't even get stars like that due to light pollution from the moon.

[TravelingChris]

Amy in NH, in many areas, you won't, not because of the moon so much but because of high clouds or cloud cover. I have seen skies like this. They were in certain very dry areas where there weren't any clouds that night.

[In The Great White North]

Clouds get in the way here most nights.

 

Those cities look eerie - like a post-apocalyptic scene with no signs of life.

[Jennifer3141]

That is so cool!

 

We have lots of people up here working on light pollution. A lot of the farmers are being careful now, especially around firefly season.

 

If I look at the sky with my back to the small city 20 miles away and look out over Lake Michigan direction, we get a very nice sky.

[songsparrow]

I have seen skies like that in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The number of stars had me truly awestruck; I had never seen anything like it before.

 

There are only a few places in the eastern half of the country where you can have skies dark enough to see so many stars. See, e.g., this map.

[Anne in CA]

Thanks for posting that!

[8circles]

Really cool. Thanks.

[Melissa in Australia]

The sky is like that here all the time. I live in the least polluted hemisphere, in a country where cities are far apart, in a rural ares with no street lights, right next to the coast with no air pollution, light pollution and often no clouds

[*lifeoftheparty*]

 

 

Can anyone here see stars like that? I live in a dark rural area and, although we have a beautiful night sky, we don't even get stars like that due to light pollution from the moon.

 

 

A friend of ours was in the Navy, and he was on a submarine for a while. He said there were times when they were way out in the middle if the pacific and saw stars like that. When they were surfaced of course..,,

[Granny_Weatherwax]

Thanks for sharing. It makes me sad that I am unable to see stars like that. In fact, I almost do not believe you can actually see stars like that. :sad:

 

When DS and I visited the Boundary Waters at Christmas we were amazed at the number of stars we were able to see. It was breathtaking. I grew up in CO and the stars seen while in the backcountry are amazing as well.

 

I hope you get a chance to view stars someday.

[skeeterbug]

The sky is like that here all the time. I live in the least polluted hemisphere, in a country where cities are far apart, in a rural ares with no street lights, right next to the coast with no air pollution, light pollution and often no clouds

 

I was absolutely amazed at the stars when I first moved to Australia!!! So beautiful!

[Mom in High Heels]

For the few months we lived at Ft. Huachuca (Wah-choo-kah) in AZ, we were shocked at how many stars we could see. It was so beautiful. Not enough to make me ever want to live there again *shudder* but I'm glad I got to see it.

[sewingmama]

Am I allowed to say it looks spooky and I prefer the light pollution lol.

 

I've driven a few times to central Australia where there is nothing but open desert....massive amounts of stars and no clouds. It was kind of scary especially when we drove through Coober Pedy with all the open mines.

 

 

When we lived in South Korea I don't think I saw a single star there the whole year . It's always lit up and smoggy.

[EmmaNZ]

The sky is like that here all the time. I live in the least polluted hemisphere, in a country where cities are far apart, in a rural ares with no street lights, right next to the coast with no air pollution, light pollution and often no clouds

 

 

I can't tell you how much I want to live where you are :001_smile:

[skimerinkydo]

We used to be able to see some stars in our neighborhood until someone passed around a petition to get streetlights put in. The person with the petition couldn't believe I didn't want to sign it. I liked seeing some stars. Now we can only see the brightest of stars.

[SarahW]

I saw the most amazing night sky the night I slept in Wadi Rum in Jordan. We could even see little blips of light from what we could only guess to be satellites.

 

It's funny, when I learned constellations as a kid I always thought the Greeks must have had a really wild imagination to think that connecting a few pricks of light would make a bear, or a guy wearing a belt. Now I realize just how much more they would have been able to see, and that maybe they weren't so crazy after all.

[cathmom]

Yes, I live in the country and constellations make so much more sense now than they did as a child growing up just outside Philly! Like, how could you miss the Big Dipper? It's hanging so obviously over the street!

[TKDmom]

The one time I've seen the stars like that was when I was 16. We were moving from Southern CA to Southern AZ. It was July, so we were traveling at night to keep all our pets from overheating. We stopped at a rest area around midnight in the middle of the desert and I could actually see the Milky Way. I had no idea there were so many stars in the sky.

[LibraryLover]

Thanks.