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Comment by AngryData | Hacker News Reader

This shouldn't be surprising to anybody who has spent time outside away from light pollution. Living in a rural area it is clearly and obviously visible every night when there isn't clouds.

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Agreed, this shouldn't be surprising at all, on the contrary it is sad that today's urban generation will never appreciate what it is to look up and only see stars. When I was a kid we used to sleep on the terrace during summer season. My uncle and I would stare at the stars, constellations, meteors etc. and he would tell me their names in both English and in my native language. It was quite fascinating how the mythologies of the constellations were different in different languages. Ex: The great bear (ursa major) was known as the seven sages (when translated in English). The pole star was a mythological diety, Orion the hunter was actually a deer. Sometimes we stayed awake well into the early dawn. Those were some of my best childhood memories.

One of the things that shocked me the most when visiting New York City is that on a daily places I would only see a tiny, narrow sliver of the sky. It's mostly covered up by buildings. Then I wondered what affect this has on the people who live there. It was awful for me.

There is a story of come city in the US (San Fran?) losing power and emergency services were overloaded with calls of people freaking out over the milky way.

The story is Los Angeles, but not sure the veracity

Fun fact: in SF, the fog can act as a light pollution blanket: from the top of Mt Tam, I’ve looked southeast and seen the Milky Way on a moonless night

Much of Marin is relatively non-light polluted compared to similarly populated areas thanks to the outdoor advertising prohibition, though LED street lights have made things worse. (I'm not disputing the fog blanket point, but it's presumably helped by reduced light pollution).

I feel lucky that I often see a lot of stars and constellations, even during twilight, in the middle of downtown San Francisco

And not just a product of some contact high? :P Wild.

SF is not a long trip from some pretty dark skies: https://www.darkskymap.com/nightSkyBrightness

If you haven't ventured out to try to see the milkyway (be sure to check stellarium or similar) you should give it a try sometime.

Most of the populated US is a lot further from truly dark skies than we are in the bay area.

It does make a big difference to go somewhere really dark, but that's a bit more of a haul. Once on a trip through rural Oregon I could see the milkyway through my windshield, pulled over to turn the lights off and view and was amazed that it cast a visible shadow once our eyes were adapted.

> every night when there isn't clouds.

Rural Scotland here. There’s always clouds. Well, 99% of the time anyway.

So frustrating when there is northern lights and it’s overcast.

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