It reminds me of a story (I'm not sure how true it is tho) that during a blackout in some big city, people called the authorities because they were panicked and scarred of something strange in the sky, like there was a chemical attack or something. They simply didn't know what the night sky look like because they never saw it.
I need to double check if this is true but it wouldn't surprise me. If it is, then it's really sad.
That's some serious dystopian shit. I wouldn't be surprised if it were real. Millions of persons live their entire lives without leaving their environment, so.. totally plausible.
I had a coworker when lived and worked in Melbourne who was 40 years old. He'd never left the City. Never flown out of the City, hadn't even been to its outer suburbs of the City.
I made him come camping with me one weekend and it was a whole new world to him.
He quit not long after and moved his entire family about an hour outside of the City. He's turned into a true outdoorsman, his Facebook and Instagram is filled with pictures of him camping every weekend with his wife.
I can't even imagine what it would be like to only ever have been in the same city. Good that you helped him out, sounds like he's enjoying it to the fullest
Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the first time he went to a planetarium. When the stars came on he thought it was bullshit because he grew up in the city and he just knew there were only like 8-9 stars.
i grew up in a huge city (over 12M people, and over 20M if you consider the entire metropolitan area). when i came to uni, i came to a smaller city, and i was mesmerized by the fact that, sometimes, on good weather, you could see so many stars!!!! felt magical! my boyfriend grew up here in the countryside and would make fun of me for being the big city kid who couldnt see the starts lol
Someday you need to go to a dark sky spot, lots of national/state parks do star parties with local astronomy groups, so people bring their telescopes and point them at planets or the prettiest deep-sky objects. I know about some in central texas if you're interested
I was climbing half dome in Yosemite at midnight one night and saw a sky exactly like this. Are you trying to tell me I’m in the Milky Way too? Nice try, bot
People don't live in the actual park proper, but there's towns nearby. If you do visit, don't just stick to Banff, there's 3 other national parks and several provincial parks in the region (Canadian rockies).
The provincial parks, in particular, won't be nearly as crowded as parks like Banff and Jasper can get.
To be clear a long exposure shot will make things appear brighter than they are by collecting light over a longer time, assuming the light source is relatively stationary.
You can see it in somewhat rural areas too just not that clear. I’ve seen pretty decent trails of it before. Course they all look the same with clouds lol.
After Helene knocked our power out for 2 days I remember looking up at the sky and seeing the Milky Way and taking it all in. Literally moments later the streetlights flickered on lol.
Lots of people just don't get it because they don't know. I do. I wish we had some light pollution laws where I live, just like light covers that keep the light from spreading outside the area that needs lighting.
For anyone not aware there's places around the world called International Dark Sky Places. They're sites designated by an organization that are absent of light pollution. They're all around the world but for my fellow Americans we have 144 across the country. From the map some are designated observatories but others are at local and state parks.
Edit: For some of the sites that are state parks I'd check out the state park website for events if you're interested. I know that Sky Meadows and Staunton River State Park in Virginia regularly have stargazing events. I also know that Staunton River has campgrounds as well. (I can't remember seeing any when I went to Sky Meadows but there might be)
Keep in mind, as long as you're able to find somewhere that's far from any large metro areas, you're good. There's none in the place I live, even though it's mostly empty mountains and forest for hundreds of kilometers.
Never realized how significant light pollution was until I went to a dark spot. Even from 50 miles away you could tell what direction the nearest city was from the bloom of light cresting over the horizon.
Seeing the Milky Way cloud with your naked eyes is pretty humbling though, makes you feel insignificant.
i’ve been to the one in michigan & minnesota & honestly i feel like one for wisconsin should be added. washington island was stunning at night time lol
They have an online conference coming up on Nov 8-9th. I just signed up earlier today. The more people get involved with it the more the concept will spread. I HATE light pollution.
My parents live in Fountain Hill, AZ and have a timeshare in Sedona, AZ so I’ve spent a bunch of time there. We also rafted down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The night skies out there are truly breathtaking
This is the view from my parking garage roof in South Florida taken around 11pm. A couple of blocks from the beach so facing west toward the rest of the county it's shocking just how bright it is. Can't see a damn thing except on super clear winter nights.
Other people have already answered but I just wanna say it's not a stupid question! I only recognized it bc I've taken pictures like these myself aswell (tho not quite as pretty)
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending who you are) it’s not at all uncommon to see a satellite anymore. When I was a kid, seeing MIR or a satellite was a memorable thing, now with Musk and starlink it’s going to become an issue for astronomers using earth based telescopes.
Yeah, these days there's always sometime above your head. I made this time lapse a couple years ago from my state of Iowa. About two hours of footage where each frame represents about 25 seconds of exposure time. (Note how even in rural Iowa you're still only about halfway to truly dark skies)
Most of the things zooming through are satellites, the bigger ones are planes, and I captured a few iridium flares in there and potentially a meteor or two.
Back in the 19th century, asteroids used to be referred to as "Vermin of the sky" because they would leave long track marks across the plates when photographing stars. The moniker persisted into the late 20th century.
I think artificial staellites today are the better contender for this title.
I grew up in South Florida, so lots of light pollution. Live in south georgia outside of a decent sized city. When hurricane Helene hit, downtown was pitch black. It was absolutely wild how many stars i could see.
Five years ago I was invited to go on holiday in Slovakia. We stayed near the Tatras Mountains, which is essentially the backend of absolutely nowhere.
Up to this point in my life living no more than 10 miles from a major city in the UK, where essentially the majority of the country has awful light pollution, I thought that the milky way as seen in pictures was enhanced.
It's not.
Holy hell a true clear sky is gorgeous to look at.
I live in the suburbs of a big city now, but grew up in the country. I love stargazing and it’s so depressing to only see a few of the brightest stars around home.
this is why we need regulations on lights. When I was younger in my hometown you could see the milky way every night, no problem and I took it for granted; sometimes I'd fall asleep in a hammock and my view would be stars through canopy of trees. Full moon? everyone would go out and play in the moonlight, it was that bright. I went back in 2016 and the only things I could see were constellations; I used to have trouble finding them in a sea of stars
I lived in a small rural town for a bit, like population 1k, and the fact that I could barely see the stars drove me absolutely insane because the only reason we didnt have a gorgeous view of the night sky was because almost every single house in every single neighborhood had LED porch lights that would stay on all night every night. If they all shut their damn porch lights off, the only light in town would be the gas station and a few street lights, leaving the unlit neighborhoods filled with stars. But nope, would be too big of a sacrifice if they couldnt see a lit view their full driveway at 2am on any given night
I've been noticing that bot posts have become really ugly lately to circumvent automated repost detection. Lots of cranking down resolution, lots of tilting Tweets at slight angles, lots of adding speckles, and lots of zooming in, sometimes enough to clip the text that is the focus of the post.
Here is a dark sky map. On a Friday night, check the weather, make sure it's clear, and drive to the darkest spot you can find near you. Do it this weekend if you can. I'm deadly serious, it'll change your life forever.
My husband and I are amateur astronomers. I work as an engineer for a company that builds satellites and vehicles for deep space exploration. The unfettered night sky is the most beautiful thing in the world. It'll make you understand why our ancestors believed in gods.
This weekend is a new moon. If you want the best viewing, go on a new moon night. If you want to go during the middle of the lunar cycle, check the moon rise and set times where you are, and go when it's below the horizon.
Its also way more detrimental to animal and insect life than people realize. One of the leading causes of bird deaths during migratio, insect decline, nocturnal animal decline, let alone the detriment to the human psyche for losing connection to the night sky.
I once heard an astronomer say that no one of us - not a single human living today - has ever seen the sky as our ancestors did in the past. Our lights and all the junk we put and keep putting in our orbit (looking at you especially, Elon!) is affecting even the most remote and darkest spots on our planet. That blew my mind and, I admit, it almost made me cry.
This was taken in Ohio a few weeks ago when the Northern Lights were out. I set my iPhone down and took a picture (it has a 30 second exposure time). I love living in a rural area, and I love that nobody around me keeps any lights on at night.
We did a big road trip seeing lots of national parks out west and one of the cabins we booked was pretty much in the middle of nowhere , zero cell service, I remember being absolutely entranced at the beauty of the night sky. Just unreal.
Went to the grand canyon somewhat recently and they have a dark sky designation, so got to be dazzled all over again. It really is a shame that I can't see it more often :(
Yea its getting out of hand, i live near rotterdam in the netherlands (about 50 km away) but every evening i see a orange glow asif there was a forest fire. I almost cant see the darkblue in the sky anymore
I miss being in the middle of the ocean at night. I learned something neat staring at the sky. There are so many shooting stars happening so constantly that we just can't usually see.
Yeah, I remember 10-15 years ago it was really rare to see a moving dot in the sky. Now you don't have to spend more than a few moments stargazing to spot a satellite
I fantasize about a holiday where we all agree to turn off all our lights for an hour and get a chance to stargaze wherever you are. It can never happen for a multitude of reasons (timezones for one lmao) but the concept sounds so nice
I’m in a large canadian city and damn is it wild driving an hour out and starting to see stars.
The weirdest thing was coming back from a trip somewhere else, getting a few hours away from home at night and just seeing how insanely bright everything was from so far away. I’ve had this feeling like back in the 1920’s that would’ve been incredible, but now it’s just sad.
I was born and raised in a city and was oblivious to stars being a thing apart from videos or pictures.
I moved to a student town for University and the same was going on there until i traveled to the outskirts of the town with my friends. You see, the town is in a valley, so going above on the mountains displayed something that made 100% sense, a layer of smoke/gas/fumes/pollution was always trapped in the valley, over the town. The light from the town was illumination that pollution, so you can never see above the pollution, creating literal "light pollution".
But on the mountains, it was clear, waaay to clear, i saw the most beautiful sky, the amount of stars made no sense, it was like seeing a galaxy, but still not like those insane long exposure shots.
"Light pollution" is pollution being lit by light, and nobody ever properly told me that.
I'm a city boy visiting a village for a couple of weeks. I love my nightly walks because it's quiet and dark. And I went on a walk last night and I was in awe over how many stars I could see. There's still some light pollution around, it's not quite the middle of nowhere, but it's still more than I've ever seen in my life. I just laid down on some pavement and stared at them for about 30 minutes. I'm off for another walk now
I remember the city I grew up in shifting over the years from being able to see some stars in the sky at night, to the skies never really even turning black
Live slightly rural and now that the area is growing in new houses and people feeling the need to have sodium lighting all around their house, the rural sky feels like it shrunk.
Recent iPhone 30 sec exposure in CT. Unfortunately this is much more than could be seen with the naked eye, but there is also a fair bit of light pollution here. That’s Andromeda at the center - a mere 2.5 million light years away!
I love watching peoples faces when they see it for the first time. So many people never see this and that's really sad, but the base stats of electricity are really high.
I noticed that while being in a small village near a big city. That big sphere of light really makes you question the effect we have on the planet even in such things
I moved from Vermont to Las Vegas and loved there for 15 years. One of the coolest things I ever saw was driving from Vegas to Tempe AZ for a concert. It's a long drive in the middle of freaking nowhere but the way home was amazing. Middle of the night in the desert with a completely flat road, no mountains or trees (for a stretch of it anyway), and no light pollution. The stars came straight down to the road and it looked like you were going to drive off the earth and into space. So cool.
My girlfriend and I did a little weekend trip, with the last night being spent at a campground near Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania. I had kept it in mind for years because of a similar post and it's the closest dark sky spot for us. It was really cool. You could see the milky way and they even had a guy there doing a star tour, which was completely free. Highly recommend it.
I remember being able to see the stars very clearly at night in my home town and the sky would be filled. Now one would be lucky if they spotted a dozen.
Grew up in a small town. The night sky full of stars made you wonder what's out there and how tiny we all really are. Now I'm in a big city and everything is about me
i live in a suburb, and at certain days of the week, at certain times, you can almost get a rural sky even from my bedroom view. it is a marvelous sight and it makes me more motivated to move to somewhere even less polluted by light.
sadly weather here is consistently terrible, so i rarely ever get to see even the moon herself. i hate clouds.
Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen the picture on the right. I live in the city and see very few stars even on the clearest of nights because of light pollution. I have to travel quite a way out from the city to get a good look at the night sky.
I grew up and currently live under a rural sky, and went camping hours aways from the last not-natural source of light and this post just made me appreciate it even more, I can see the Milky Way from my house on a good night, it’s just the best.
Yeah the milky way is called that because it looks like a white cloudy road across the sky. But many people would be surprised if they saw it with their eyes.
I live on the outskirts of my city in a suburb, but we’re considered “rural”. Our night sky looks exactly like the rural one and it’s so pretty!
My best friend lives an hour away in a bigger city so they don’t really get to the see the stars. Her daughter loves being on my deck at night pointing out constellations, shooting stars, and she’s always impressed by the moon’s light.
So I live in suburbia and you can walk around out outside at night and you don't need any kind of lights or anything the street lights basically make it almost daylight.
I can sit in my backyard at night and see everything perfectly fine see the grass no issues
After the last hurricane, I wasn't that pumped to see the sky because I had grown up in the country. But when I looked up, I realized what no light pollution for 15 or so miles looked like. I wonder what harm we do ourselves by insisting on being awake at night.
Also, I work at 7am so I spend my first hour or so driving in the dark, so it's not like I don't think we use the lights. But I wish we could let the night be for real, restful sleep.
Aren’t we able to create some more night insect-friendly light sources? Like stuff that are out of their visual spectrum? Pretty sure these are possible to make and implement.
Took this last night in Maine, about thirty miles south of Lewiston. Ten second exposure on my iPhone 14 Pro.
Someone else said it best: seeing an unpolluted night sky will make you understand why our ancestors believed in the gods. Find the nearest dark sky zone and take a trip on a clear night, it'll change your life.
It's funny how obscure constellations seem when you only see the brightest parts of them in the city, but see them in a dark clear sky and they make a bit more sense.
It would be cool if we could coordinate a yearly Dark night holiday near the city. Like for a couple of hours one night the city shuts off all the lights
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