I've overlayed stays on a light pollution satellite map | Hacker News Reader

I've overlayed stays on a light pollution satellite map

darkhotels.co

576 pointslouison11211 comments

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.

I had planned a trip to the Haleakala Crater in Maui for the highly-recommended sunrise, and our airBnb turned out to have a pretty significant ant problem, so we ended up going a few hours early.

I don't know why anyone would even mention the sunrise considering how incredible that night sky was. The experience was similar to seeing the grand canyon: too big, beautiful, and intricate for my brain to take it all in. It was absolutely breathtaking. Also, absurdly cold (we were well prepared and it was still not enough)

The sunrise was fine. Very pretty, to be sure. But the main event was that night sky, for which I would have shown up a few hours earlier than I did had I known about it.

I completely agree with your overall point about the fantastic night sky but it should be no surprise that people suggest sunrise, as the Hawaiian Haleakala literally translates to "house of the sun".

I didn't know that, thanks. Also, I don't think it's _not_ worth going up there for the sunrise. It is. It's beautiful, and probably worth the drive.

I mostly just think it's weird that nobody even _mentions_ the transcendent night sky you might happen upon during a new moon or moonless part of the night.

Agreed with you on this. I have never yet seen a sunrise that was worth the effort. But a good night sky is incredible.

My best was at about 3500m in Peru, in the wee hours after fleeing my tent to be sick. Absolutely mind blowing to see the whole milky way like that.

I had the same experience at around 10,000 ft in the cascades. Once you're above the thickest part of the atmosphere, a whole new dimension opens up in the sky. Everywhere you look, in the space between the stars, there are more stars, infinitely receding to the edge of the universe. The sky starts to look more like a fractal than a few points of light scattered around.

At 18,000 feet altitude on the Thorong La Pass in the Nepali Himalayas in 1984, there were more stars than darkness in between them.

I have never been at that altitude but I had a similar experience in the Sahara a few years ago. My experience was enhanced with a little bit of Moroccan hashish. I laid on a dune and gazed at the sky and the heavens were blazing with light. I felt like I was falling into the stars. It was unforgettable. A clear sky at night is the farthest thing from dark!

It sounds like to get these experiences I'm going to have to go far out of my way and pay a lot of money. Our ancient ancestors got it for free, and I wonder if they thought anything of it.

We probably owe the roots of all science (and thus technology) to the clear dark sky observations of ancient ancestors. Astronomical observatories were common in all early civilizations and it there where some of the roots of mathematical thinking begin (the other being credit accounting tools :-)

Astronomical observations are in a sense simpler and cleaner (and until the invention of accurate timepieces, compasses etc.) also of extreme practical use.

The reason is likely that our normal down-to-Earth environment is too complex and chaotic to be parsed. Observation of nearby processes gets things wrong because of overlapping effects. E.g. Aristotle thought that the natural state is for things to stop moving when they stop being pushed by a force. This is only the case because down here friction is dominant.

> have to go far out of my way and pay a lot of money

it should not be like this. A lot of light pollution is due to just not giving a damn about side-effects.

I’ve considered whether the human concept of religion is possibly rooted in debates as to whether other things are out there. Because once you’ve had that conscious thought I think it’s a short hop to making up stories about who/what it is that could be living out there. Time passes and it becomes indoctrination for many, and on the mind for most at times of their life even if just out of curiosity.

Definitely not on a hill over this but it’s just been a thought I’ve wrestled with at some point. I’m sure it’s not even original at all.

True religion at its core is about insuring happiness, and a big part of being happy is having a way to explain the world around you so your mind is at ease.

Sure, they didn't have to pay with money, past a certain point they didn't even use money, but they paid with (much) shorter lives. Money is just the cost of self-determination.

But if you just want to get somewhere on top of a mountain with no light pollution, you don't have to spend very much money, unless you happen to live in an area of the world with no mountains.

> Sure, they didn't have to pay with money, past a certain point they didn't even use money, but they paid with (much) shorter lives. Money is just the cost of self-determination.

the cost of a clear night sky does not have to be "no technology". We don't need nearly as many streetlights, lighted signs, houselights, etc as we have.

I've lived in areas where regulation restricts lighting choices; it is a good thing.

Excess lighting is called light pollution, and it is a societal choice to put up with it. Society can choose otherwise and help us rediscover our wonder at the world.

If you live in the northeast of the US, Medawisla is a fantastic "dark sky park" located in Maine. Unforgettable experience, highest possible reccomendation.

Far out of your way depending on where you live, sure, but not necessarily pay a lot of money.

Like I got to see the Milky Way up in the Porcupine Mountains a couple of years ago in Northern Michigan, off the shore of Lake Superior, while my wife was hunting for Yooperlites (rocks that glow under a UV light) on the beach late at night. Other than an 8 hour drive's worth of gas and a fairly inexpensive AirBnb it didn't cost anything extra to see it.

And you can always move to one of these places, too, and see it all the time. Solidly middle class homes up there can be had for about $200k in small towns/cities, then you only need to drive about 15 minutes to get out of town to see it.

And if you're in the western US, it looks like there's a lot more options. Much darker in general out there outside the major cities.

I do miss when you could see these things just outside of town in Illinois though. Used to drive just a bit outside of town and park on the side of a rural road and just look up and see it, when I was a kid/teen. There's almost no place in Illinois where you can see the Milky Way nowadays (and where I live now it's gray-white on the map, so I only see a few pin points in the sky right now, it's terrible).

The Milky Way is visible most nights (except when cloudy) on St. George Island, Florida, about 60 minutes from Tallahassee or 6.5 hours drive from Atlanta. It's stunning. Most nights I saw meteors as well. However, the northern sky is a little obstructed by trees.

White Sands National Monument in New Mexico has incredible views of the stars.

I saw beautiful stars canoeing on a lake in the Adirondack mountains.

I once saw comet Hyakutake by accident when I was riding in the back of a van on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I think it was around the Fort Littleton exit.

I suppose it depends on your starting point how expensive it is to see the stars. However, I agree that there is just too much artificial light. I get that we feel much safer and less bored, but there's something lost by not having the easy access to the night sky.

Having a warm dark sky is not to be underestimated. I don’t have great darkness where I live but it’s certainly enough to pick out a fair few sights

The problem is a clear night tends to be rare, and in winter when it’s 5C outside.

They thought about it a lot, that's the origin of astronomy and math.

> Our ancient ancestors got it for free, and I wonder if they thought anything of it.

Not sure what they thought of it, but I think it's telling how aware they were of the night sky as an active environment, e.g. the movements of the planets, and the relationships between events in the sky and our seasons (even though the their explanatory models were wrong).

On a clear night - especially in winter - before the invention of fire, it's all you'd be aware of. No wonder that they made patterns (constellations) of the brighter stars.

> 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...

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:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26664/is-it-poss...

I’ve seen Jupiter’s moons using binoculars in the middle of the city without a dark sky. TIL it’s possible in some cases to spot them by naked eye.

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!

High-lights? ;-)

Heh, pun not intended!

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.

> there is no reason for most of them

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.

> Street lights deter crime.

Kinda, sometimes. But this field is also fraught with tons of "bad implementations of a good idea", making the problem worse, as well as intuitions that don't hold up to empirical studies.

Classic example is a neighborhood adds extra bright streetlamps and neighbors install extra-bright flood lights on their garages. This illuminates some areas, but the areas that are missed become even "darker" because the extra light in people's eyes ruins night vision. Hiding in the bushes with your black thieving skimask (or along the fence line, or just off the road) becomes even more effective, and everyone else just gets a bright streetlight shining into their bedroom window all night long.

There's a whole subculture of designers talking about what makes effective street lighting, but it basically comes down to less blue light aimed more downwards.

And the best crime deterrent is having a lively neighborhood with more eyes on the street in the Jacobs-ey fashion. I heard of one crime study that considered lighting and cameras and all those things but found the best predictor of low crime rates was how many dogs lived in the neighborhood (and therefore people outside walking their dogs).

It's even worse; many cities have opted for blue, narrow-band LED street lighting in recent years which is actually missing so much from the color spectrum that your vision operates worse within the lit areas, and it gets harder to detect boundaries between objects and motion. Not to mention it screws with peoples' circadian rhythms.

What we have is a situation where our city, state and federal governments know jack shit about the science behind proper lighting or why it's so important for both people and wildlife to get high-quality, whole-spectrum, 10-25KHz+ PWM lighting.

And contractors take advantage of this, charging exorbitant amounts of money for intentionally sub-par lighting systems. It's a crime against both nature and humanity.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/led-streetlights-are-giving-neighb...

> There's a whole subculture of designers talking about what makes effective street lighting, but it basically comes down to less blue light aimed more downwards.

Considering the context of crime prevention, it is rather ironic therefore that police stations traditionally have none other than blue lamps above their doors!

It is a chicken and egg problem as people won’t walk their dogs outside as much in an unsafe area

I'd be willing to bet this isn't the case: even in unsafe areas dogs need to go outside to do their business. I doubt there's a natural experiment out there that could demonstrate causality...

> Street lights deter crime.

Lighting affects property crime more than violent crime. It also depends on where the lights are, both in terms of neighborhood[1] and country[2].

On the other hand, lights dramatically affect how safe people feel[3] in an area, even if that feeling is not necessarily based on actual danger.

[1]: https://doi.org/10.3386/W25798

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1745-9133.2004.TB00058.X

[3]: https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-2046(96)00311-8

Regarding crime and driving safety, it does seem like a suboptimal solution that may even trigger some Jevons paradox. Are drivers going faster because it's well lit? Will people be less prudent when walking through it alone? etc.

On the good side of the spectrum, I've never experienced a city as dark as Tokyo at night, which is also one of the safest on both accounts...

> Will people be less prudent when walking through it alone?

So you're blaming victims for being mugged -- or worse? Because they weren't "prudent" enough?

Rather than realizing that dark areas create opportunities for criminals where they won't be recognized, or caught on camera, and where they can escape without people spotting them?

The lower rates of crime in Japan are due to cultural factors. And lighting doesn't change cultural factors.

> So you're blaming victims for being mugged -- or worse? Because they weren't "prudent" enough?

Of course not, I am merely pointing the fact that the feeling of safety may not be actual safety. Changing the environment alters the behaviour of criminals and potential victims.

You also ignored that in the same sentence I blamed perpetrators: imprudent drivers.

> The lower rates of crime in Japan are due to cultural factors. And lighting doesn't change cultural factors.

That's basically where I was going with this.

As if the Japanese had always been tidy, the Dutch always fervent cyclists, the Italians smug about their food quality, etc. Culture shifts.

> 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.

Accepting your points for convenience, wouldn't we get the same benefits with lights that only pointed downward? And if you further restrict to warmer colors (which interfere less with low-light sensitivity, also less diffraction reducing light pollution), with a sensible but low max intensity (again keeping the human eye more dark-sensitive, allowing better visibility into the non-illuminated spaces)?

Reducing nighttime lighting by 50% would make a huge difference in sky visibility.

There's a lot of streetlamps that switched to early versions of LED bulbs that start glowing purple as they age. I've actually really come to like the purple color illuminating streets, it's much easier on the eyes than the bright white.

Ironically, LED lighting, which is much more environmentally friendly, will make light pollution worse because of its frequency (blueish, which gets scattered by the atmosphere) and because it is cheaper to leave on at night.

LEDs can do oranges/reds just fine, it is just that blues are cheaper for interesting historic reasons (and people just love blue). LEDs can do better reds than anything that used to be used for outdoor lighting and there's some hope that LED lighting could help red shift outdoor lighting, eventually. (The redder it is, the less it interferes with night vision the less overall light needs to be spilled to seem as bright.)

the counterpoint is that LEDs allow for much better distribution of light which can dramatically decrease the amount of light pointing up

Or safety in general.

I don't want to walk in dark even if there is literally no other person.

You might be surprised how much your eyes can adjust to see if there are truly no other lights. Often in urban areas what we see as "dark" is really our eyes unable to see details the unlit areas because of stray light from streetlamps. In a dark rural area, a full moon is plenty bright. Thus the "harvest moon"

> In a dark rural area, a full moon is plenty bright.

I completely agree. But, it's very rarely a full moon.

When there's no moon at all, which is literally half the time, you might be surprised at how pitch black it is at night. Or just, you know, when there's heavy clouds.

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.

There was a Cadillac from 2000 that had night vision in a HUD style design [1]. That never caught on, but there's no reason we couldn't have a really great implementation of that now.

I don't know if an IR emmitter would be reasonable, but that could augment the headlights to provide some really good visibility even without street lights.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIR_LzriXYE

Larger Audis have night vision as an option: https://www.audi-technology-portal.de/en/electrics-electroni...

Ironic how, in a way, light keeps us from being illuminated.

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.

Orient Point on Long Island had the same thing. Kind of shocking given how built up the whole island is.

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.

As someone who grew up in a place without light pollution, I had this wonder every night. And I miss it.

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...

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).

It won't eliminate light pollution, but something we can all do is petition our local governments to pass dark sky ordinances: https://darksky.org/resources/guides-and-how-tos/model-light...

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.

Humidity. Above a desert you won't have much moisture in the air in summer.

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.

Your comment reminded me about one of Asimov's classics I'd long forgotten about: Nightfall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_an...

It reminded me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy's third-of-five book Life, the Universe and Everything

> Krikkiters

> This race of quiet, polite, charming and rather whimsical humanoids caused the most devastating war in the history of the Galaxy (with over two "grillion" casualties). Their homeworld, Krikkit, is surrounded by a black cloud, so they had no knowledge of the universe outside their world. When a spaceship crashed on the surface of Krikkit, the inhabitants quickly stripped it of its secrets and used them to create their own "flimsy piece of near-junk" craft, Krikkit One. Upon reaching the outer edge of the dust cloud and seeing the galaxy for the first time, the people of Krikkit marveled at its beauty before being gripped with fear of it and casually deciding to destroy it, famously remarking "It'll have to go." The Earth game of cricket is a racial memory of the events of the Krikkit Wars.

via https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_races_and_specie...

A more recent echo of this is Greg Egan's Incandescence, in which space caterpillars discover general relativity without being able to see the sky:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel)

Asimov also wrote The Caves of Steel, set in a future where Humans live on Earth in completely enclosed underground cities. Robots farm and mine on the surface.

Civilizational development would be radically different without celestial navigation.

This is a significant plot element in Andy Wier's Project Hail Mary.

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.

Even in the summer I still remember the first time I saw the milky way. Can't believe I was completely unaware the sky was supposed to look like that

It's easy to understand why people looking up at this might consider it the work of the super natural.

it's mind-blowing to think that, for ancient humans (and moderns that live in distant/"isolated" areas), every night is still like that.

It’s really is an incredible experience.

How is winter helpful?

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.

Maybe because you were already in New Mexico which has some pretty good dark areas? I'm up in Santa Fe, I don't need to drive long to get fairly dark.

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.)

[1] http://www.darkskynm.org/lightinglaws.html

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.

The distances in New Mexico are huge and not much population.

The Cosmic Campground is pretty close and they often have guys with telescopes there.

That is an unfortunately unique place.

“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.

Absolutely.

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.

> - Perhaps add a popup/permission notification for accessing location (see previous point as well).

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.

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.

Probably just IP location given that it doesn't ask for any location access (unless you click on the button to center the map around your position)

It must be IP because the browser can't access GeoLocation without asking.

Is it USD or is it the local currency with a $ in front of it. i am seeing some $50000 places in japan..

> I like that it finds my location, even without asking or requesting permission.

I actually found this quite concerning!

Guess what, literally every web site you visit can do this based on IP geolocation. If you're really concerned about this, use a VPN.

Then why do websites ever ask for location permission?

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

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.

Hmm, seems like a cool idea, but I can't actually get it to show any hotels or anything? Probably pebkac but just FYI.

Looks like the HN traffic has exhausted their API quota.

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.

just curious, which API are you using to get this data (the hotels)?

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.

Yeah when I lived in San Antonio, we used to go out to Hondo to see the milky way and explore the skies with our homemade telescopes.

LOL today

Thanks for doing this! I'd really like a "Search this Area" button. My first instinct was to use the map to find somewhere dark, then look at stays.

Great visualization! For those in the Northeast US, Cherry Springs State Park in PA is a wonderful place to visit for night viewing (and camping). It's one of the best places (darkest night sky) on the eastern seaboard for stargazing. We camped there in the summer and saw the Milky Way like I'd never seen before. Be sure to look at the moon phases when planning -- try to plan for a new moon so you have a dark sky: https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/CherrySpringsSt...

Edit: I misread that you're showing light pollution, not air pollution, so disregard my comments. But maybe an idea for another site?

Very cool. I was buying some land a few months ago, and made a similar map of the country to help choose areas with consistently good air quality.

I couldn't get the calendar to change from October, so I couldn't check myself, but I was wondering if you adjust for seasonality. Some areas have a distinct "burning season" when farmers burn their fields and the air quality is significantly worse.

I was also wondering if you're using publicly available sensor data. The granularity looks a lot better than what I had downloaded.

> you're showing light pollution, not air pollution

I wonder if there would be a strong correlation between the two.

I’d think up to a point and then it flips. Highways and suburbs tend to have a lot of lighting and vehicles so the air pollution would be peaked, but then you get to the dense city areas where there is much much more lighting but not much capacity for vehicles so I’d think you’d see a dip.

This is light pollution, it doesn't have much seasonality and evolves slowly.

On a technical level that's true. But the actual intention here is "places where you can see the sky", not places with low light pollution. Air quality is highly seasonal, and winter tends to have far clearer skies for assorted reasons. Wouldn't you be a bit upset if you booked a place way out in the country for stargazing and every rancher had just lit their fields ablaze?

That said it's probably asking quite a lot to composite that kind of data together in any meaningful way. You need a lot of domain knowledge for that.

Any thoughts on how someone would do something similar for water?

Neat idea. Is there a color legend somewhere? I don’t see one.

There really should be a legend somewhere, but in practice the amateur astronomy community has standardized on a convention that's more or less the same in color scheme and scale to the one reported here: https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2020/colors.html.

You'll see the same scale in use at other light pollution sites, such as:

http://www.cleardarksky.com/maps/lp/large_light_pollution_ma...

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info

https://cires.colorado.edu/artificial-sky

Was also looking for a color legend. I can generally understand the different colors/layers, but was initially confused.

Text that explains exactly what each color refers to would be helpful.

You're right it's missing. It shows the Bortle class of each location, see https://www.lightpollutionmap.info for a better explanation.

My phone screen got so full of stays I couldn't see the map! Thanks for the link.

What’s up with North Dakota? There’s a spot in the middle of nowhere that has pollution levels on par with major metro areas.

I noticed that as well, it’s gas flaring from O&G production. You can see similar patches south of San Antonio (the Eagle Ford shale) and in West Texas (the Permian Basin) and probably a few other spots too.

Probably fracking rigs. Where I'm from in the Marcellus shale region of Western Pennsylvania, you can see rigs on top of hills for miles when the leaves are down in winter

Edit: This map of Bakken Formation rigs correlates to their location in Western ND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation#/media/File:B...

When extracting or processing natural gas, it's common to burn off some of the byproduct in a process known as "flaring." It creates massive amounts of light pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare

Those are the gas and oil fields of North Dakota.

Not getting any stays overlayed on the map. HN hug of death? API Limit?

The eastern desert ranges of California are great for seeing a clear night sky (Panamint Valley etc.). There's even a Dark Sky Festival out there (Nov 9-12 2023). Shows up nicely on this map too.

https://www.easternsierraobservatory.com/california-dark-sky...

Simpler method: just go visit central and SE Oregon.

* Maybe fly in to Bend. Nearby you can go up Pine Mountain to visit the observatory in the summer. Best views of the sky I've ever had... you're up at around 2000 meters, away from the city, with clear air, usually. You can very easily see the milky way and SO many stars.

* https://traveloregon.com/plan-your-trip/destinations/lakes-r... - dark sky park near Prineville.

* Steens Mountain & Alvord Desert - https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/destinations/parks-for...

Nice! I love how the date picker shows the phase of the moon.

Yes, this is very handy for people looking for a dark site. Not that they don't know it already, but it's good to have it there in the calendar.

The Michigan tourism folks have become focused on dark sky tourism. Here's a website that tells you the best parks in the state for sky gazing.

https://www.michigan.org/darksky

What am I missing here? I see a dark sky map. That's it. No hotels or anything like that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38084473

It's working nicely over here, but sometimes takes a long time to load the places, and doesn't give any indication that it's still working on it.

Same. I tried changing the dates and location search. All that happened was a recenter/zoom, but no homes were listed.

This itnerant stargazer says...awesome :) I've been paying close attention to light pollution (and access to a telescope or stargazing tour services, so there's that too :p) while traveling internationally recently.

Nothing against the site, I just hate this usage of "stays".

Really nice idea, but I'm having an issue with the date-picker; can't change the month, so it's stuck in October (I'm using brave browser on android)

I moved from Austin to rural Texas ~2.5 years ago and it's so dark, it was disturbing at first. After a while you get used to it but it's still SO awesome seeing the Milky Way many nights.

This past summer, I'd be outside working late (necessary in 100F+ heat) and turn off the lights, wait a minute and look up.

It was breathtaking.. and we're not even in the darkest place.

Feature request: Any chance of a "back in time" slider? I'm going camping this weekend for a bike race in Utah. Even there I don't recall being impressed by the stars there, compared to my childhood in Kansas, where I could see the Milky Way from my front yard. It would be interesting to compare this to what it looked like 30 years ago.

What strikes me most is that the correlation with population is still weaker than expected - at least it appears (eyeballing it) that Europe has a larger/more extreme light pollution than India and China combined.

It also shows the lack of development of eastern Europe's rural areas. The contrast from one country to the next is quite strong.

I'm curious how the dark skies map is actually built. I assume it tries to make generalizations based on density of buildings. And that is only as accurate as the building data is in the map source.

It's probably fairly accurate overall, but there is undoubtedly some region-specific things (different lighting styles, etc) that throw a wrench into the mix.

One place out my direction has a blue blob in the middle of a dark gray area, so you wonder what kind of civilization is there. Nothing, just a few buildings that are uninhabited and unlit. So there's no light pollution in actuality, but dark skies thinks there is.

They are based on nighttime satellite photos. The downside of that is its only based on the light that gets through the atmosphere. So a dusty/humid place will have a lot more light pollution than the map shows because the dust blocks the light from the satellite, and reflects some of that light towards an observer on the ground.

I live in the western USA where very dark sky areas are abundant. After reading your comment, I was curious to see what Europe looked like. I was astonished that not just Europe, but the Eastern USA also, has no very dark sky areas at all. It is amazing how populated these regions are.

But, then I go down to Australia and nearly the entire continent is great for sky gazing (other than all the critters trying to kill you).

One thing that is interesting about this is how one may not need to travel to some far and remote place to experience low light pollution.

In the map of the UK, for example, low light pollution can be experienced within a 2 hr train ride from London to Wales, Devon or Cornwall. Similarly for France or Spain.

Central Europe and Eastern US has little such luck, though.

I apparently live in a pretty low light pollution area in the UK, but it's been a while since I've seen the stars because of clouds =[.

Nice idea, but it didn't work great for me. It mostly finds hotels in heavily light polluted areas. And in the tiny out-of-the way places where light pollution is minimal, it didn't show me any lodging options. But going to Google maps for the same spots, there are definitely options.

Slightly off-topic, but I wonder what the big circle of light pollution is in Western Brazil, west-southwest of Manaus? It looks like it's centered over Urucu, which Google reveals is home to a natural gas pipeline. I wonder if there was a fire there or something when the satellite passed?

When extracting or processing natural gas, it's common to burn off some of the byproduct in a process known as "flaring." So yes, there was a fire but there's always a fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare

If that's the cause, it's surprising that it's as bright as an entire city, for example nearby Lima.

No major accidents ever as far as I can Google (I speak Portuguese, so I searched the local web).

It's broken on FF/Linux. I just flashing garbage that would probably trigger epilepsy if I had one.

Another bug on FF/Android (private mode): it first showed the map, then overlayed a message saying I had to enter my email to access, but once I did it asked me to click a non-existent "Got it".

I clicked on one of the social media buttons and immediately went back, and then I could see the map. No hotels, though, but that has been mentioned already.

Completely psychedelic on Firefox/Win too.

It's goofy on FF/Mac too. Not flashing but oddly distorted.

Works fine for me. I'm also using Firefox + Linux.

You just made it a whole lot harder to find the bug! :)

This is wonderful!

One suggestion is to also include probability of cloud-cover at that time of the year.

As a UK resident I sadly have to agree

Excellent idea and I encourage all who've not seen the moonless stars on a clear summer night, do it at least once. It affected me much more than like seeing Vienna or Paris for the first time, and I love those cities.

If you want outdoor stays your much better off using a large outdoor travel specialist sites like https://www.pitchup.com/

Very cool, it would be helpful to have a key for what the colors mean. I can deduce that white, is little to no darkness, and shades of green mean dark, but it would help to give that little context.

Airbnb is a pile of sh!t that will screw over travelers on a whim. Please DO NOT PROMOTE THAT COMPANY.

Use hotels. They're cleaner, cheaper, and full of amenities. Plus, you don't have to clean before you leave!

Edit: And, before anyone downvotes me too much, think about the fact that Airbnb does NOT audit any stays or even verify proof of ownership of the property and/or the right to sublet.

If you do complain, Airbnb will give you the runaround for months in end, perpetually pushing goalposts further down the field, even amid a slew of overwhelming evidence.

Yes, this is empirical data I'm working off of. And, no, it wasn't a one-off event.

Imagine all the crap sold on ebay that isn't vetted. Now, apply that to a vacation rental and you have the company in question.

As long as y'all show up before dark. That's the courtesy.

This is very cool. I have been working on a way to get a hestmap of distance from roads to plan Backcountry hiking trips but this light pollution data seems much simpler.

Related: I released an AirBnB search engine optimised for desktop a few months ago.

https://stay100.app

Hey how'd you import the maps? I'm beginner cs/geospatial undergrad & looking to build something like this

It is using the Google Maps JS API.

Majority of Texas has no data when you zoom in:

https://i.imgur.com/cFYZ5pQ.png

It's a shame the site is not really usable on mobile.

I stayed in shelter cove recently to see the perseid meteor shower. Definitely recommend staying in a similar remote area with low light pollution.

Where I grew up I could see the milky way over my house. I didn’t realize how lucky that was. Now with urban sprawl the stars are fading there.

Please share the prompt!!

/s it is so beautiful. Really helps to understand the shape of humanity at a global scale. Middle East and Korea made me reflect.

You've got a bunch of places all placed at 0 latitude 0 longitude, saying "null". You may want to check your data sources.

null island is a tourist hotspot!!

The airlines have trouble scheduling flights, though...

;-)

A couple times I've found my flight taking a detour: https://dropover.cloud/253a84#33241fcd-b58a-4c23-9c77-779072...

Needs labels for the light pollution scale, it's not immediately obvious.

A grayscale mode would be even better (thought less pretty at first sight).

some feedback:

- a legend of the colors would be great, explaining in words what they mean, what I might expect - date range search is a bit odd for this, I guess if I was aligning with astronomical events, but if I'm just looking for nice places to stay. - Mine defaults to my location, seattle. I've seen 3 total astronimical events here in 13 years due to clouds.

I am confused how do I see the places I can stay?

The perfect overlay map to find the ideal cabin in the woods. I'd love to be able to overlay this on Zillow or Airbnb.

I like how the map shows the lights from drilling platforms out in places like the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

Maybe doesn't work in Firefox? I just see a map with what I guess is light pollution overlaid but no hotels.

This should be fixed now. The HN traffic was way above the rate limit allowed by our data provider API. Hence the downtime in our AJAX requests and the reason why you didn't see any hotels loading up. It may still be on and off at the moment (there are hundreds of people active at all times), but if you move the map around a little your AJAX request should eventually "get in" ;-)

Same on Chrome.

Currency seems wrong when pointing this where I live in Japan, says that hostels are going for $5000 a night lol.

What on earth is going on in Närpes in coastal/rural Finland? It looks like it has extreme light pollution?

Greenhouses, apparently. Try Google Translate on https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-1355536.

Whats going on in Venezuela in Maturin??

It's petroleum industry[1] in the Orinoco Belt[2], ignition of waste gas[3] produces a lot of light.

[1] https://energy-cg.com/OPEC/Venezuela/OPEC_Venezuela_BaseMap_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoco_Belt

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare

The Track Prices button hovers over the calender so you can't change the month. Otherwise pretty cool!

This website is unusable in iPhone 14 Pro Max in Safari.

Would be interested in something similar for the 8th April Eclipse.

Doesn't seem to work. Just asks for my email address and won't even accept one when I put it in.

Is it possible to add a legend? What do these colors represent in terms of visibility?

White/Transparent: You don't see stars at all/barely when you look up

Dark blue: you see all the stars that can see you.

Brilliant! Wish it had a color legend. But I always wanted a site like this.

Totally lost on the UI sorry can you explain how to operate the thing ?

Typo in the title: overlayed ‐> overlaid

Terrible. The page froze Firefox and I had to reboot my laptop.

Is there a legend for the shading? I wasn't quite sure what shades of color meant what amounts of light pollution.

there is apparently a huge difference between the night sky in the Northern vs Southern hemisphere. whoever spent their life in the North has no idea how beautiful the Southern sky is.

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