I think many people have never experienced and don't realize how mind-bending a clear night sky in the winter without light pollution is. You need to get pretty far from civilization but when you do you will see so many stars, colors and effects you had no idea were visible without a telescope. The first time I experienced it I couldn't believe my eyes and it redefined my perception of space.
An added bonus of a dark sky is that with a good pair of eyes (and more democratically, with a set of binoculars) you can see all sort of clusters, nebulae, Jupiter's moons and e.g., Andromeda.
While not as breathtaking as the panoramic view of a truly dark sky, experiencing this "micro-structure" is also a mind-expanding experience: The sky is no longer a set of random point sources. Its an organic "thing" enclosing other "things".
I once got to watch the sunset from the peak of Mauna Kea. After descending to a less stressful altitude, we spent some time stargazing. I've never seen the sky like that before, or since; it felt like you could see the depth in the galaxy. I was no longer looking up at the dome of the sky, studded with stars; I was looking out, from the side of a planet, into the wide open space of the universe.
> experiencing this "micro-structure" is also a mind-expanding experience: The sky is no longer a set of random point sources. Its an organic "thing" enclosing other "things".
Galileo was immediately astonished by this when he made his first telescope and instantly saw the complexity of things up in the sky.
Jupiter's moons? Have you actually seen them? I think that I saw them a few years ago, as a line instead of as distinct dots. I even asked on Stack Exchange at the time:
My best experience of this was at Mt. Everest base-camp (Tibet side) at 5,364 metres (17,598 ft)
Not just no light pollution, but much less atmosphere too! It looked like those long exposure images of the Milky Way. There aren't words available to describe how incredible it was. I’ll just state that it was one of the highlights of my life!
i think one of the greatest crimes of the modern world is light pollution. it has completely redefined nearly everyone's perception of the universe and themselves in a really tragic way.
we would all be better off with fewer lights on buildings, and fewer streetlights. there is no reason for most of them, and the cost is existentially incredible.
Yes there is, it's crime. Street lights deter crime.
Also simply driving safety. Driving with just headlights causes more accidents than on a well-lit street, since visibility is so much worse.
I love to see the night sky as well, but I don't want to pretend there aren't extremely good reasons for street lighting, and those reasons aren't going away.
That being said, are there ways to reduce outdoor lighting of giant industrial parking lots, of stadiums at 3 am, or whole floors of skyscrapers when 99% of people have gone home? Sure. But at the same time, reducing nighttime lighting by 50% isn't really going to make any difference in sky visibility. It's more about not wasting electricity.
I'm talking mostly about urban areas though -- in rural areas where there's already a decent amount of visibility and the population is small enough that most roads already don't have street lights, then regulation can actually make a difference, e.g. banning always-on floodlights on people's driveways.
Greatest crimes? Dumping PFAS and mercury into our ecosystem? Sure. Acid rain? Yeah. Bright cities? I think there's a long list of 'crimes' I'd put before that, and I love the night sky.
Some of these things won't be gone for generations or more, whereas you can turn lights off pretty easily. Ideally we'll swap out the older designs of streetlights and such as better designs become prevalent and there's economic incentives to do so.
Well, that depends. In general, there's no need for street lights to be on when there's no traffic. But I grew up traveling throughout my country from rural to main capital and there was always an area of the highway without street lights. That area was noticeably more dangerous because you simply see less, and have less reaction time. Especially during rain or snow or other extreme weather. It isn't just other cars. It is also deer who might pass the highway, for example. And that area was in a forest. If there were some kind of way to have them more intelligently work on/off (for example by seeing phone signals come closer) I'd wager we'd already have such. I actually dislike that premise and would like to agree with you (selfishly: I'd like my kids to grow up on a livable planet), so I hope you can prove me wrong.
The greatest crime? What? We are literally pumping plastics and carcinogens in to the air 24/7, poisoning the ground, and deforesting the planet.
Some light pollution is unfortunate but it’s essentially trivial in comparison. It causes no long term damage and doesn’t really do anything but make the sky less interesting.
My family used to have a ranch and in college I went up there to work off a debt to my parents. I stayed in a cabin at the top of a ridge above the valley the ranch sat in. The ranch was about 7 miles outside of the nearest town, a small place of about 400 people, way up in the northeast corner of California.
One moonless night I walked outside and looked up and my jaw dropped at how startlingly bright the sky was with stars. It was like a long-exposure photograph but in the highest resolution my eyes could see.
One thing that always amazes me is just how much you can see on the ground in a moonless, cloudless night when you're far from anything else, especially in the desert.
Having lived on a Caribbean island, I can relate to this visual sensation. Let me only tell you further that when coupled with the auditory expeience of the rhythmic ocean waves washing against the shoreline, it amplifies the entire encounter for me.
I grew up in a small town and my wife grew up in big cities. On our trip to Morocco we were on a camping trip to a desert and she asked me looking at the night sky: “What is this huge white thing across the sky?”. Took me a while to realize that she was asking about Milky Way.
I also grew up in a smallish town, it was always odd to hear visitors comment on the sky. It was just normal to see many stars, even in town. Visiting big cities at night always had an oppressive feeling to it, like having been mugged.
The first time I saw the Milky Way with my bare eyes, I almost fell over. The sky looked like static from an old TV set. There were so many stars, it was overwhelming.
Another important thing is to give your eyes time to fully adapt to darkness. In my experience this can take hours. The best stargazing experiences I’ve had have been camping under the open sky without a tent, where I would awake in my sleeping bag in the middle of the night and just be absolutely amazed at the stars above me.
Colours? Are you sure you can really see colours? The astrophotography stuff is "enhanced" to get colours.
I've been in the Namib desert in Namibia around the Orange river at night, although not during winter. There are loads of stars, but it's not colourful like the pictures and people will be underwhelmed if they have that expectation.
I took a group of people who had only lived in cities into the countryside to watch a meteor shower. It was fun seeing their minds blown when there were more than like 10 stars.
One thing I can't believe not everyone has seen is Andromeda. What's more is it doesn't even seem to be common knowledge that you can see it.
If you're in the southern hemisphere the coalsack nebula is cool although a bit scary.
I recently was on a 2000m high mountain in the Bavarian Alps during a clear night and it was truly breathtaking how many stars were visible. I grew up in the countryside where it's also very dark at night, but I haven't been out there at night for years.
Me too, I was on Formentera, which is an island off the east coast of Spain, just below Ibiza.
It's a small Island, only accessible by boat. One summer evening I went for a walk along the beach with my partner and we stood there in the clear night - with no light pollution, with the whole milky way above us. There were thousands and thousands of stars I had never seen before in a giant array that stretched across the whole sky. Subtle colours and brightness differences gave the milky way a structure and randomness at the same time, it was an incredibly beautiful and humbling experience, and changed my perspective of the universe too.
Also, it can be hard to navigate the sky if you're not used to it. The patterns of stars that you can see instantly in more polluted areas get a lot of "background noise" and you need to relearn the sky to a degree.
I've never seen it myself, but I plan to. I once showed to colleagues a photo of what can be seen by naked eye (the milky way) and they would not believe me even remotely (it wasn't super exposed).
What's special about the winter? My great-grandparents on my dad's side lived in the California high desert, maybe 50 miles or so from Edward's Air Force Base, when I was a kid and we visited every year for Independence Day. A week and a half after the summer solstice and I've still never seen more stars or more of the Milky Way outer rim than I did back then.
How held back might science be in an alternate history with one change: a permanently cloudy sky. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, would all have had so much less purchase on the shape of the universe to build their theories on. So much science depends on the fundamental insights from those models.
We would be a more inward focused civilization, and lesser for it.
Absolutely! A few times I have seen the full grandeur of this on the west coast of Tasmania. Highly recommend. Also neat seeing all those satellites flying about after sunset.
I used to live in an RV & cabins park in a very dark area, actually inside of the radius of the Very Large Array radio telescope. As part of a barter arrangement I made a website for the park. On the site I pitched the park as a destination for amateur astronomers. Come camp inside of a telescope! We put up some Google ads to that effect.
I don't think they ever got a nibble from that. It turns out that the population of amateur astronomers willing to drive long distances to dark spots isn't all that large.
But this is the internet, and a niche interest can have a significant following, and you're not trying to make a bunch of money with this. So from us dark sky lovers, thanks.
We also have state-wide anti-light pollution regulations on the books[1]; unfortunately, enforcement is spotty and depends on the community.
Where I live (southern NM) we've had a steady influx of people from out of state, and the first thing they tend to do is install outdoor security lighting that is in clear violation of the NSPA. All that to say that I have noticed that some of the newcomers who were in violation may have been reported since their fixtures are now turned off after 11pm. So, enforcement does happen; it just takes time. Thankfully, we have a few astronomers in the community!
(The one deficiency in the NSPA is that it defines fixtures based on wattage rather than lumens. There have been efforts to change this language, but they've stalled.)
Yes. Also I think we astronuts tend to avoid campgrounds (too many people with lights) and motels (we're up all night). A piece of remote public land is just more suited to the purpose.
I moved from Santa Fe County (Rancho Viejo area) to the Denver metro area and am sad every time I go outside at night. We could see the Milky Way most nights.
The NM sky is amazing during the day, too. Such a vibrant blue!
> I don't think they ever got a nibble from that. It turns out that the population of amateur astronomers willing to drive long distances to dark spots isn't all that large.
That's quite surprising to me as a person who occasionally will drive long distances just to see the dark night sky without a telescope. But I guess any group looks well populated from the inside. I suppose amateur astronomers with good equipment can get quite nice views where they live, though.
“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”
- Foreword to A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, 1949
Aldo Leopold was a genius. His love for nature was poetic and inspiring. He also offered a pragmatic ethic of the land. I'm not sure I've ever read someone as holistic and well-intentioned.
One example for anyone who isn’t familiar: He dedicates several pages to an oak tree he cut down for firewood after a lightning strike destroyed it, and his tribute to its sacrifice left me in tears.
Hey, very good idea and nice execution. I like that it finds my location, even without asking or requesting permission. Extra points for having a track prices option.
I have a couple of suggestions/recommendations if I may:
- Put a Bortle filter so that hotels on specific (dark) areas can be selected. I understand this is a bit difficult but it would make an even better filtering option.
- Localize it, give us an option to see prices in different/local currency. Currently it's only visible in USD.
- I can see the Affiliate ID from Booking, perhaps it would be better to mention this somewhere to avoid complaints from users.
- Perhaps add a popup/permission notification for accessing location (see previous point as well).
- Put an info/about page so that you can give more info and also take some credit for your work.
My ISP connects to the greater internet in minneapolis even though I'm in iowa, and that's where the map centered on for me initially. Usually means they are just doing geo off the IP.
I'll try and make this. beginner cs undergrad looking for maps-based things to build.
if anyone can reply and hit me with tips, quick info, or just a laundry list of things I'd be wise to google & learn to use, please lmk
thanks!
I’ll never forget a moment from the bus trip I took across the U.S. west as a kid when we got to Montana. We had been driving for hours and got to our cabins far from everywhere late at night. A bus load of tired kids filed off, eyes half open, and then someone said “Hey, look up!”
Cue two dozen kids saying “oohs and ahhs” in sync. Don’t think I’ve seen such a spectacularly starry night since.
Cool site, but it really needs a legend. I can intuit that white is high light pollution because its on city centers, but how bad is green? I have no idea what I would see there.
I was thinking this same thing. I live in what the map has as a "pinkish red" area (right outside of white) and I just recently camped in a brown orange area (3 levels darker). The difference was noticeable but not a crazy amount. I really wonder how much darker the blue or not even colored areas are.
I've been to a few blue and darker areas, and those are properly mind blowing. That said, I live in a dark green area, and you can see some definition to the milky way on a clear and dry night
I'll try and make this. beginner cs undergrad looking for maps-based things to build. if anyone can reply and hit me with tips, quick info, or just a laundry list of things I'd be wise to google & learn to use, please lmk thanks!
Digital mapmakers often have a hard time getting color scales right; it's common to just sort of wing it and end up with something that looks like crap and/or doesn't work well with the nature of the dataset.
I'd recommend using one of the tried and tested scales from ColorBrewer (https://colorbrewer2.org). Great info there to help you decide.
And when you do pick a scale, Chroma.js (https://www.vis4.net/chromajs) is a fantastic color library that has built-in support for ColorBrewer scales.
Also http://turfjs.org has some great tools for manipulating GeoJSON.
OP Here. Exactly. We have a rate limit imposed by our data provider that's too low for this traffic atm. Hopefully you guys still "get" the concept and awesome to see such feedback. Try and come back when things calm down. Thanks. I'm working on ways to increase the rate limit/find alternative data providers.
My town (Dripping Springs, TX) was pretty dark when I moved here 10 years ago. We could at least see the Milky Way back then.
Today it claims to be a dark sky certified community, but this seems baloney. No more Milky Way. And while the town claims to have all those regulations to protect the dark, they start right off by ignoring those rules for the schools' football fields and stuff.
Readit News
While not as breathtaking as the panoramic view of a truly dark sky, experiencing this "micro-structure" is also a mind-expanding experience: The sky is no longer a set of random point sources. Its an organic "thing" enclosing other "things".
Galileo was immediately astonished by this when he made his first telescope and instantly saw the complexity of things up in the sky.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46036/pg46036-images.ht...
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26664/is-it-poss...
Not just no light pollution, but much less atmosphere too! It looked like those long exposure images of the Milky Way. There aren't words available to describe how incredible it was. I’ll just state that it was one of the highlights of my life!
we would all be better off with fewer lights on buildings, and fewer streetlights. there is no reason for most of them, and the cost is existentially incredible.
Yes there is, it's crime. Street lights deter crime.
Also simply driving safety. Driving with just headlights causes more accidents than on a well-lit street, since visibility is so much worse.
I love to see the night sky as well, but I don't want to pretend there aren't extremely good reasons for street lighting, and those reasons aren't going away.
That being said, are there ways to reduce outdoor lighting of giant industrial parking lots, of stadiums at 3 am, or whole floors of skyscrapers when 99% of people have gone home? Sure. But at the same time, reducing nighttime lighting by 50% isn't really going to make any difference in sky visibility. It's more about not wasting electricity.
I'm talking mostly about urban areas though -- in rural areas where there's already a decent amount of visibility and the population is small enough that most roads already don't have street lights, then regulation can actually make a difference, e.g. banning always-on floodlights on people's driveways.
Some of these things won't be gone for generations or more, whereas you can turn lights off pretty easily. Ideally we'll swap out the older designs of streetlights and such as better designs become prevalent and there's economic incentives to do so.
Some light pollution is unfortunate but it’s essentially trivial in comparison. It causes no long term damage and doesn’t really do anything but make the sky less interesting.
Dead Comment
One moonless night I walked outside and looked up and my jaw dropped at how startlingly bright the sky was with stars. It was like a long-exposure photograph but in the highest resolution my eyes could see.
Growing up, I never even thought that people would not know what it's like; it was always just a part of my life.
Now I live in a city...it sucks...
I've been in the Namib desert in Namibia around the Orange river at night, although not during winter. There are loads of stars, but it's not colourful like the pictures and people will be underwhelmed if they have that expectation.
I took a group of people who had only lived in cities into the countryside to watch a meteor shower. It was fun seeing their minds blown when there were more than like 10 stars.
One thing I can't believe not everyone has seen is Andromeda. What's more is it doesn't even seem to be common knowledge that you can see it.
If you're in the southern hemisphere the coalsack nebula is cool although a bit scary.
It's a small Island, only accessible by boat. One summer evening I went for a walk along the beach with my partner and we stood there in the clear night - with no light pollution, with the whole milky way above us. There were thousands and thousands of stars I had never seen before in a giant array that stretched across the whole sky. Subtle colours and brightness differences gave the milky way a structure and randomness at the same time, it was an incredibly beautiful and humbling experience, and changed my perspective of the universe too.
We would be a more inward focused civilization, and lesser for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_an...
I don't think they ever got a nibble from that. It turns out that the population of amateur astronomers willing to drive long distances to dark spots isn't all that large.
But this is the internet, and a niche interest can have a significant following, and you're not trying to make a bunch of money with this. So from us dark sky lovers, thanks.
Where I live (southern NM) we've had a steady influx of people from out of state, and the first thing they tend to do is install outdoor security lighting that is in clear violation of the NSPA. All that to say that I have noticed that some of the newcomers who were in violation may have been reported since their fixtures are now turned off after 11pm. So, enforcement does happen; it just takes time. Thankfully, we have a few astronomers in the community!
(The one deficiency in the NSPA is that it defines fixtures based on wattage rather than lumens. There have been efforts to change this language, but they've stalled.)
[1] http://www.darkskynm.org/lightinglaws.html
The NM sky is amazing during the day, too. Such a vibrant blue!
That's quite surprising to me as a person who occasionally will drive long distances just to see the dark night sky without a telescope. But I guess any group looks well populated from the inside. I suppose amateur astronomers with good equipment can get quite nice views where they live, though.
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”
- Foreword to A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, 1949
One example for anyone who isn’t familiar: He dedicates several pages to an oak tree he cut down for firewood after a lightning strike destroyed it, and his tribute to its sacrifice left me in tears.
I have a couple of suggestions/recommendations if I may:
- Put a Bortle filter so that hotels on specific (dark) areas can be selected. I understand this is a bit difficult but it would make an even better filtering option.
- Localize it, give us an option to see prices in different/local currency. Currently it's only visible in USD.
- I can see the Affiliate ID from Booking, perhaps it would be better to mention this somewhere to avoid complaints from users.
- Perhaps add a popup/permission notification for accessing location (see previous point as well).
- Put an info/about page so that you can give more info and also take some credit for your work.
Is the site using the location from the browser or just IP location? (My location was 240Km (150 miles) away from my home.)
I want to suggest also permalinks.
I actually found this quite concerning!
Cue two dozen kids saying “oohs and ahhs” in sync. Don’t think I’ve seen such a spectacularly starry night since.
I'd recommend using one of the tried and tested scales from ColorBrewer (https://colorbrewer2.org). Great info there to help you decide.
And when you do pick a scale, Chroma.js (https://www.vis4.net/chromajs) is a fantastic color library that has built-in support for ColorBrewer scales.
Also http://turfjs.org has some great tools for manipulating GeoJSON.
Today it claims to be a dark sky certified community, but this seems baloney. No more Milky Way. And while the town claims to have all those regulations to protect the dark, they start right off by ignoring those rules for the schools' football fields and stuff.
LOL today