Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingaling | Hacker News Reader

I would argue that it's not so much that people ignore or have forgotten the stellar sky.

Instead for most of us we cannot see more than 30 or so stars plus a few planets, due to light-pollution. So trying to do back-yard astronomy or simply star-gaze is futile and therefore we carry on with other pursuits.

Take people out to a dark site and they will always be awe-struck by the real night sky. Once you've persuaded them to go 100 miles into the wilderness... but in daily life the stars, galaxies and nebulae are simply pretty pictures in books.

View on HN

It's not that hard to find a dark area, and I've been really enjoying photographing the night sky when I get the chance. With just a tripod, an SLR, and some basic knowledge it's fairly easy to get great photos.

A few of my favorites:

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Aurora.jp...

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DanceOfTh...

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sagittari...

https://ryanbritton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Eclipse.j...

Nice photos!

I just got back from a trip to Zion National Park where I shot the Milky Way one night. It was clearly visible with the naked eye every night.

National Parks are a great place for night photography because they're usually 10s to 100s of square miles with no lights. Even Joshua Tree which is near Palm Springs is pretty good. You can see the light from both Vegas and Los Angeles from it, but in the right spot in the park you get some very dark skies.

I've been to southern Utah before but never stayed out at night. After seeing some photos from the area I am really wanting to plan a trip that way to do some of my own.

Beautiful work, Ryan. I love your combination of artistry and science.

Agreed. To help fight for the remaining dark skies, please check out the International Dark Sky Association at http://www.darksky.org

Not only it helps with light pollution, but it saves energy that would go into space!

This. My dad taught me to some of the constellations when I was a wee lad and I tried to practice as much as I could after that, mostly because reading Jules Verne's books does that to a kid.

Turned out it was pretty hard. I only got a chance to get some decent practice during the summer, which I often spent at my grandmother's house in the countryside. Today, there's a fair deal of light pollution even there and even well-known constellations are getting hard to identify. In my home city, at bloody 4 AM in the morning, on a very clear winter's night, I could maybe see 30-40 stars from my parents' balcony, if I squinted a little.

On the other hand very dark sky also makes constellations hard to identify. With so many stars visible it is a bit harder to see the "main" stars that are making the shape. The good example are the photos of rbritton posted in this thread. "DanceOfTheSpirits" features some majors highlights of the winter sky (Orion, Gemini, the brightes star of norther sky — Sirius) but they don't just immediatelly pop up among all the other stars.

It is, but there are simple ways around it:

- It helps if you can identify small, local "clusters" of stars. E.g. even in a very dark sky where you can see stars you never remember seeing, Orion's belt is very easy to recognize, because three collinear stars so close together are a fairly rare sight. Same for the North Star -- it's not too bright, but it's related to two very recognizable constellations and you can find the North based on other clues as well, so you know where to look. Once you've identified one constellation, it's pretty easy to find the other ones.

- It also helps if you're familiar with how the sky looks in various seasons. This way, you have a pretty good idea about what should be where. Granted, this probably doesn't work well if you have to travel a lot. My home country is pretty small; in its northernmost point, the sky looks pretty much the same as in its southernmost. If I suddenly found myself transported from Maine to Texas, I imagine I'd be in some difficulty.

Exactly.

I found that if you want to get urbanites looking at the heavens above, you should show them Iridium flares. Those are man-made objects, yes, but they can punch through all the light pollution and their short duration (a second or three) makes catching them an excellent sport.

To anyone who wants to see these flares: https://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx

Thank you... I was surprised there was no mention of light pollution in the article itself.

My parents now live in Wyoming and the sad thing, to me, is that the few times I've been out to visit, it's been overcast the whole time. I remember as a young child in rural Arizona seeing many more stars in the sky than I ever see today... I just don't get out far enough to really see a more pure sky. Only thing that might get me on a cruise in fact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com