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from the headlights,-white-lines-and-black-tar-rivers dept.
A new atlas has illustrated that 80% of North Americans are prevented from seeing the Milky Way's bulge by light pollution:
The luminous glow of light pollution prevents nearly 80 percent of people in North America from seeing the Milky Way in the night sky. That's according to a new atlas of artificial night sky brightness that found our home galaxy is now hidden from more than one-third of humanity.
While there are countries were the majority of people still live under pristine, ink-black sky conditions — places such as Chad, Central African Republic and Madagascar — more than 99 percent of the people living in the U.S. and Europe look up and see light-polluted skies.
The country with the worst light-pollution is Singapore, where researchers found that "the entire population lives under skies so bright that the eye cannot fully dark-adapt to night vision." Other countries with large percentages of people living under skies this bright include Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600377)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @09:39AM
Humans instinctively associate light with security and nothing will ever change that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @11:21AM
No-one wants to be eaten by a Grue!
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday June 11 2016, @03:31PM
What is a grue?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday June 11 2016, @09:12PM
What is a grue?
I suggest you download and play a few games of Zork.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Sunday June 12 2016, @12:57PM
Whoosh...
Did you ever type "What is a grue?" in Zork?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday June 12 2016, @03:58PM
Did you ever type "What is a grue?" in Zork?
That never occurred to me. Now I am going to have to play Zork again.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 11 2016, @03:00PM
The flame keeps us warm on cold nights. It gives us light. It makes holes in the darkness when the Moon is new. We can fix spears at night for tomorrow's hunt. And if we are not tired, even in the darkness we can see each other and talk. Also—a good thing!—fire keeps animals away. We can be hurt at night. Sometimes we have been eaten, even by small animals, hyenas and wolves. Now it is different. Now the flame keeps the animals back. We see them baying softly in the dark, prowling, their eyes glowing in the light of the flame. They are frightened of the flame. But we are not frightened. The flame is ours. We take care of the flame. The flame takes care of us.
(Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, 1980, pp. 137.)
Humans discover fire, find other ways to make light and heat, and so many years later it's as though night never really comes any more. The chapter that quote is from is called “The Backbone of Night” (also shows up in that episode of the documentary series) after the name the !Kung Bushmen have for the Milky Way (Sagan 139).
It's at least a five hour drive before I can see the backbone of night even here in flyover country. I was able to find a good location using this light pollution map [lightpollutionmap.info].
The tricky part is making sure that it's not completely overcast. I've been using Weather Underground's 10 day weather forecast graph [wunderground.com]. (Location chosen at random—this one is near the Shawnee National Forest, which looks to be another good viewing location.) Under Customize, it's possible to show forecast cloud cover. That should be less of an issue now that it's summer.
In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 11 2016, @03:05PM
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Ballantine Books, 1985, pp. 137.
Grr, been a while since I've cited something in dead tree form.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @08:37PM
Thanks for the link!
I was able to find a good location using this light pollution map [lightpollutionmap.info].
Except that is uses a Bing map underlay, and now I think I have pancreatic cancer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @10:08PM
Clear Dark Sky [cleardarksky.com] is another good reference to use.