Are The Stars Out Tonight? – IOTW Report

Are The Stars Out Tonight?

Saturday, 11 June 2016, 20:00 Dr. Tar Uncategorized 43

A new global survey of outdoor lighting reports that 99% of Americans live under light polluted skies and most of us never get to see The Milky Way.

The overuse of poor street lighting that leaks way too much glow into the night sky is having effects on our sleep and animal behavior.

 Because the glare of poor lighting can reach across many miles, even the remotest of locations experience an artificial glow.

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43 Comments on Are The Stars Out Tonight?

  1. So, I guess the denizens of North Korea can look up to the heavens (if they have the strength to lift their undernourished heads) and see many more stars than we can. Whoopee!

    I will admit that when I was in the Navy in San Diego in the late 60s I rode my motorcycle up to the top of Mt Palomar and when I took off my helmet and looked up, I was amazed at the numbers of stars I’d never seen before. The memory is with me still.

  2. As above, even before this ‘light pollution’ bit, most people in lower latitudes could not see the Milky Way unless they were in the mountains.
    I was in San Diego in the 60’s also. Even heading east into the desert way past any civilization or even electricity, you rarely could see the Milky Way.
    We could always ban electricity, cook and heat ourselves with dung, but I seriously doubt seeing some extra stars would be worth it.

  4. I sailed with Keith from Marathon to Tampa and we could see the glow of everglades city from 50 miles offshore. We had nary a light on on the boat and could read the charts from the glow of the stars and a very bright Venus. The Milky Way was awesome!

    Stuff like that is indescribable to someone that has never seen it.

  6. I anchored in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park-the Southern Cross was beautiful, the sky was filled with stars. I can’t imagine what the sky looks like in the middle of the ocean on a clear night.

  8. Willy.
    Seriously? You post a map done by a person who can’t spell, that says nothing about what people can or cannot see at night, to make some kind of point that you don’t even state?
    I think your brain missed a shift on that one.

  9. Menderman: And the boat was the RAGO? Right? I saw a painting of it by accident last week. It just showed up. I can’t find it now. Beautiful colors by BFH. RIP Keith.
    BTW, where’s my whistle?

  10. His last vessel was the Saga, and, yes, BFH did a wonderful job painting her. She is a 1962 Allied Seawind. The boat were where on on that trip was named “Soulshine”. Wilma sunk her in Tampa Bay.

    As to the whistle, I’m waiting on that self addressed envelope…or just ask Fur to send you one.

  12. I grew up in the Shawnee Nat’l Forest, one of the darkest areas of the country so I heard recently. In fact was just talking to my dad a few hours ago about how I miss the black silence of the woods at night, very much unlike my area of N.C. (which isn’t city by any means but still diffused by local lights).

  13. I anchored in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park-the Southern Cross was beautiful, the sky was filled with stars. I can’t imagine what the sky looks like in the middle of the ocean on a clear night.

    I’ve seen it. Ex-USN, dead in the middle of the Atlantic. Unbelievable, words can’t describe it, just like pics don’t do justice to the incredible blue of deep water.

  15. The last time I saw the Milky Way was in upper Michigan at a sumer camp (I was a counselor). I took my group of girls out in the middle of a meadow and we laid down to star gaze. I was telling them about what they were seeing (I’m a bit of an astronomy buff).

    Since I moved to Minnesota, I haven’t seen much of the stars. I hate living with so much light pollution.

  17. I spent the summer of 64 in Larson Bay on Kodiak island, Alaska. Population 64 (it was 60 until we arrived), no electricity, the post office and cannery had generators.
    There was so much light pollution that you could only see the very brightest stars, or occasionally a planet near the horizon, even at midnight and by mid summer not even then.
    The animals and everybody there seemed to do just fine.

  20. @grool
    I just moved from the Shawnee Nat’l Forest….well 4 years ago. Had been there and there about since 1976.
    I could still see the lights of Marion, Cape Girardeau, Paducah and Carbondale when the Saluki’s played night football.
    God’s Country, Little Egypt.
    I miss the absolute silence, low population density and some of the finest people that blessed my life.

  21. But the thrust of me even entering into a discussion with you was to point out that in your first post you pointed out that people in lower latitudes could rarely see the milky way….OK, but they COULD see it sometimes, no?….bare eyes?, telescope?, binoculars?….you can see the milky way anywhere in the world, given the right conditions….. You just want to argue, subject be damned….I’m done.

  22. Menderman, In late 79 and early 80’s while on patrol on a Central American mountain I could see quite well by the lights of the stars, read and write notes, 1 to 25 maps, individual blades of grass, and bugs as I walked. Incredible beauty the heavens.

  23. I live in southern NH about 35 miles north of Boston. Manchester to the west. Portsmouth to the east. On really clear nights I can see the Milky Way above my neighborhood.

  24. @JohnS: If you had bothered to check into it further before commenting, you would have found out that the “misspellings” on the map were due to the fact that the language involved was German, not English!

    Why are you so quick to find fault with others?

    Do you want to be a pariah? Because that’s how you get to be a pariah.

    😐

  26. I grew up in the Atlanta area. When I was a kid, we laid down on the driveway at night (while the parents sat in lawn chairs sipping their “adult beverages”) and stared at the Milky Way and waited for Echo to fly by.

    The fly by signaled bed time.

    Now I’m even further out in the suburbs and am lucky to find 6 or 7 stars in the sky. 🙁

  27. Cato,

    I’m a Saluki but grew up in Pope. We did most of our shopping between Paducah and Harrisburg. I know it’s darker than the light map I saw would suggest. The north end of Saline, I think it said, is pretty danged dark but true, there’s nothing there.

    As for noise, I forgot the occasional low drone of barges going by on the river. Never bothered me.

    If I ever retire I’m moving back there, New Madrid be danged.

  28. Vietvet, no shit Sherlock.
    However, I was responding in kind.
    Funny how some think attacking me is correct, but me punching back is out of line.
    Truth be told, if I was the type to back down over what people thought of me, I would have changed genders long ago.

  30. As Boy Scouts in Ireland we would lie in the fields and gaze at the sky. When it got real dark, around midnight,
    the stars came out (they were always there you know, but we couldn’t see them ’till it got real pitch dark) Then they appeared. The North Star, The Plough, the Milky Way and others we had names for. One night in Galway, our Scout Master, Sean Foley, told us if we look real hard out over the ocean we could see the Empire State Building in New York So we stood there squinting until he told us to rap it up and go to bed. Those were fun days.
    Today from my deck in Rockland I can see the same stars on a clear night.
    JohnS. Seeing the Empire State was a joke.

  33. My favorite thing to do late at night after flight ops had settled down for the night was to sit on the bow of USS Kitty Hawk CV 63 and look at the stars. They were everywhere clear down to the horizon with a 360 degree view out in the Pacific Ocean. Not only could I see the whole entire Milky Way but all of the created heavens were in front of me in every direction. It was a very humbling experience to see just how big the entire Universe is. I haven’t seen anything like it since even out in the middle of nowhere in Idaho and Montana on dark nights.

  34. @grool.
    Union County for me, past the southern edge of Giant city by about 5 miles. It the midst of apple & peach orchards
    Have a friend that bought 26 acres near Golconda not far from the Marina up rt146 about a mile or two. Near Popeye … if you familiar with him.
    Have friends in Rosiclare and E-town.
    We were always prepared for the New Madrid Fault, we would have been land locked by being surrounded by bridges that would fall in the quake.
    I hope you are able to return home.

  35. And where did all of the fireflies go? Years ago, “camping” overnight in the back yard in East Texas with views of pastures and woods. Fireflies twinkling, crickets and frogs making all kinds of racket. And Benny Frank and I making ourselves sick on a pack of Lucky Strike unfiltered stolen from my father’s carton.

  36. @JohnS: I have no problem with your continuing whatever ongoing squabbles you may have here (And by the way, you seem to have a lot of them. Just sayin’.), however, your attack on the light pollution map was plain silly, IMHO.

    And speaking of squabbles, you should probably hope that none of the female IOTWR readers see your comment “…if I was the type to back down over what people thought of me, I would have changed genders long ago”. Some of them can get quite feisty, I’ve noticed.

    😛

  37. Cato,

    We know the same area all right. The name Popeye rings a bell, i think I’ve heard my brother mention the name in the past.

    Your friend’s property wouldn’t happen to be out River Road on a bluff with a fair view of the river, would it? That’s in the same area an old friend of mine from high school lived. His parents sold it some years ago.

  40. Vietvet, of course it was silly, as was Willy’s attack on me. As I said, I was answering in kind.
    As to the other, I understand that being thin skinned and having a fetish of wanting to control what others say and think is not restricted to just men.

  42. @JohnS – Are my eyes deceiving me, or did you just admit to posting silly arguments? And make another somewhat misogynistic remark?

    Tsk, tsk…who woulda thunk it…?

    😇

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