You Can See the Milky Way
youcanseethemilkyway.com
youcanseethemilkyway.com
I somehow got in to hiking and camping sometime after college. While my family traveled a good amount, it was never to hike or camp or to remote areas.
On my first camping trip in the White Mountains in NH on the 3rd or 4th night I looked up and saw the Milky Way. I was blown away. At this point in my life I was an adult, with responsibilities, a healthy interest in science, and I never really put much thought in to it and I guess figured that whenever I saw starry night pictures that included the Milky Way that it was through a telescope, or an artists rendition, or something. Definitely not that you could actually see the Milky Way with your own eyes. To be honest it's insane. If you haven't seen the Milky Way with your own eyes, go.
Maybe that's because I've had the reverse experience: I grew up in a place seeing a large amount of stars, where seeing the Milky Way was just expected, and then I moved to larger cities where you can barely see the brightest stars.
Well, even though it sure is nice to see the stars when I happen to be in a darker place, I never really missed them at any point. They're a nice feature of the environment, but not something really critical, just like the bird chirps. They're nice to hear on the morning, but you barely notice when they aren't there. When I'm in a city I'm more concerned about the wasted energy revealed by light pollution, and the annoying sound of roaring cars at most hours.
There are studies that suggest that city lights increase people's risk of cancer. Sleep studies have shown that exposure to blue light suppresses melatonin [1]. Studies with lab mice have shown that melatonin suppresses tumor growth. I don't know how solid the science is on this, so take it with a grain of salt.
[1] This is the reason many people use f.lux (https://justgetflux.com/).
But I have firsthand experience of the facts that:
- being able to watch the stars won't automatically make people put things into perspective
- watching the stars, while a good way to put things into perspective, isn't the only one
Stars are not a fundamental element of human life experience, just a nice but dispensable thing. Even your Youtube link doesn't show anything a human can see, and just showing a random picture of a starfield wouldn't really have much effect on most people.
Seeing plain stars only works if the people who watch them already have knowledge about them, basic understanding of the involved distances, etc. It is this knowledge that help you put things into perspective, not seeing the stars themselves.
I find it is a lot like art in that way, some pieces really move people and other people can see the same piece and say 'meh'. The trick is to understand that while the art doesn't do anything for you, it really is doing something for them.
Having raised kids and watched their interaction the "interesting" bit is that person A who is unmoved by exhibit E, imputes that person B is "making it up" when they express emotion about exhibit E. It isn't "made up" or imagined of course, but it takes a while for kids to realize that everyone's perception of the world around them is different, sometimes wildly so. Often that learning comes when they personally experience seeing meaning in something that someone else doesn't.
Once you understand that everyone sees things a bit differently you can appreciate their sense of wonder even if you don't share it.
I can't really agree on this point ... Seeing plain stars only works if the people who watch them already have knowledge about them, basic understanding of the involved distances, etc. It is this knowledge that help you put things into perspective, not seeing the stars themselves. There is ample evidence in early written accounts and from the writing of young people that without any knowledge at all about what stars "really are" they can be moved by seeing them.
I'd have to disagree. If the sky were a black blank slate except for the Sun (and possibly the moon to make life necessary) a great deal of our technical innovation would be significantly different. Seeing and looking at the movement of stars has had a significant impact on mathematics in the world, and the understanding of our own planet. Seeing the stars themselves (and their chemical composition) tells us a very large deal about the universe we live in.
Well, I disagree... You're body is composed of matter that originated in the core of "a star", so you wouldn't be able to "experience" your life without this small detail.
Another great quote by Carl Sagan is: "We are made of star stuff". And he's damn right.
But hey, like, that's just my opinion, man. De gustibus non est disputandum.
For some people it's an intrinsically beautiful sight. Others, a reminder of their place in spiritual creation. To me, it's incredible that we can see such a gigantic, distant structure so clearly, in a way which gives us a tangible sense of our location in the galaxy.
The night sky is a springboard for thought: what if we lived nearer the galactic center? The sky would be bright all the time, bright as day. Likely we'd never have figured out that we live in a solar system in a galaxy; without sight of the stars and a diurnal cycle, science wouldn't have developed along the same lines. Maybe without astronomy, we'd never have ventured into the oceans. Conceivably, technological civilization would be beyond our reach. We are lucky indeed in our birthplace, for more reasons than its climate and atmosphere.
I hope that gives you some idea what the 'fuss' is about, even if it's just my perspective.
http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...
In contrast, I once went to the Hayden planetarium and saw the galaxy for the first time. If I'm honest, I may be willing to admit I teared up more than a little. The experience utterly awestruck me, and that was merely a simulation. Bad eyesight combined with poor night vision and light pollution means I had never seen the Milky Way.
Hell, the first time I got glasses in second grade was the first time I could make out leaves on a tree! Up to that point, they were just this thing I knew was there, but I had never seen one rustling in the wind. Just some shape blobbing about. To this day, I can be content to just sit outside and watch trees sway in the wind for an hour. It honestly is just the most peaceful thing to see such detail moving all at once. A lot of people just don't understand it, as trees are about as ordinary as you can get; but to me, I remember how they used to look (and can just remove my glasses). They're rich in beauty.
TL;DR: If you lived without it, you'd be amazed how much you'll appreciate it.
Little did they know that what really turns some of those young women on are not so much guys with muscles and tans, as... guys who are into planetariums, the Hubble sequence, tinkering with Maxwell's equations and such; and able to explain it all, while camping in the desert on a moonless night.
But give or take a few particulars about subject matter (and location), let's just say it's not that far off from actual experience. Which ended up being way better than anything I could have dreamt back during that time when I was being continually joshed and hassled (sometimes far from innocently) for my interests, in ways similar to what was described in the comment above mine.
Cheers
See, to me, it was perfectly normal to need to sit at the front of the class or to have to hunch over the paper I was learning cursive on; I remember being a bit frustrated that I couldn't understand the lessons if I wasn't close, but I was still young enough that it didn't occur to me my eyes were defective. Squinting was just how you made things clearer after all. At that age I sorta just accepted the world for the way it was. So in second grade, my teacher told my parents I may need glasses, and a while after I got some and learned just how near-sighted I was. (I'm currently about a -7 diopter.)
I've come across a few other people who had a similar experience. From what I've gathered, it seems that first and second grade teachers become attuned to kids that need glasses. As for why I didn't know earlier, I think it's just that I was a fairly introverted kid, so I didn't do a lot of sports or group play. And the only real detail oriented stuff I did was reading, and I could almost literally bury my face in that. It looked like intent reading (and it likely was), but I suspect that was just a matter of holding the book close enough. It's easy to overlook the clues, but straightforward if you're specifically trying to notice 'em.
Now that this comes back, I need to go back up a mountain, leave civilization, as soon as possible.
When you're in town, you can't see it. When you're in the backcountry, you can't NOT see it.
Just remember to take it slow! Always better to be over prepared than underprepared. Mother nature is not forgiving.
One of the best places to actually START is just Google up a local park, grab a water bottle and do an out-and-back (e.g walk 15 minutes along the trail and then turn around and retrace your footsteps back to the trailhead.) You can do this over lunch.
Or just get in your car, drive until you are really far away from anywhere, pull over, and look up. Then go find a motel.
As for the actual "how to do it", I'd do some the following:
* Do some research on basic gear to take (tents, water treatment, first aid, etc)
* Hit up a place like REI, Mountain Equipment Co-op or similar and load up. Make sure your boots fit - most good stores will have an incline you can jump around on to make sure your foot doesn't slip in your boot. Make sure you get the correct size of backpack, although this is not as critical as properly fitting boots. As a general rule, spendier stuff will either be tougher material or lighter, but you don't need to go nuts unless you're overburdened with cash.
* If you haven't come across the 10 essentials of hiking in your research, Google it. REI has a page - http://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/ten-essentials.html
* I'd start with a simple out-and-back overnight hike. If you're being careful, which you should, you'll probably have overprepared and will have a heavy pack, so a longer trip might not be fun. Over time you'll probably start to tweak what you take, get better gear and so on, and and your pack will start to get lighter. You'll also presumably find yourself getting fitter.
Backpacking is one of my favourite things to do on this earth. All your concerns with work, possessions, relationships and so on fade away, and you find yourself just focused on getting to the next camp, enjoying the wilderness and whatever company you have, finding water, and so on. It's an incredible experience.
And even those shoes have handled snow/etc fine for me though if you're hiking deep snow in the US it might be a different story.
There are loads of great day hikes (especially in the US) to test out things generally before you commit to a tent, camp stove, etc.
The Milky Way is so bright it always takes me time to realize that's what it actually is. And even though I'm familiar enough with constellations to use them as a sort of clock at home, I struggle to find the stars I know when I'm visiting him. There's just so many more!
In the city, I could see Jupiter clearly, and three moons through an ordinary pair of 12x36 binoculars from my 19th floor apartment window. With a very tired $40 yard sale 4" Newtonian refractor I could see bands on the planet on a winter's night. With the naked eye, the Summer Triangle, Capella, Sirius, and a few other very bright stars. None of it all that impressive from a quick glance upwards, but still stuff there to study with conscious effort.
Out in my new back yard, the view is breathtaking by comparison. On a very clear night with dark-adapted eyes there is just the hint of the Milky Way. On a normal night, the Pleiades are clear. The Andromeda galaxy is lovely through binoculars. But the real treat is the constellations - gorgeous and vivid, separated, teachable to my children.
I've been up Mauna Kea and nothing on earth can compare to that, but as an everyday treat, a bit of mythological theatre wheeling in the sky on a dark night, or even an evening's worth of nebula hunting, I'm blown away by my heavily light polluted back garden.
At my new house on a hill, you can see a huge difference being on the deck versus being down (about 50 feet) in the back yard.
People who are really interested in doing some viewing should check out local astronomy organizations. They will host star parties and will know the best places locally to do observations.
Agreed re: screening: biggest help for me is shutting off house lights and getting to a part of the garden that's shaded from neighbors.
It is quite a deck, but the backyard is a couple flights of stairs down from the backdoor which itself is on the bottom floor of the house.
There's an unusually high reporting of UFOs out there too, so maybe that's it ;)
The other big problem for astronomy, seeing (or air turbulence) is exactly backwards. It's the main enemy of seeing planets or other high resolution targets, but it has no impact on faint fuzzies, because your eye can't see much detail on those anyway.
This is why from my backyard, in one of the most light-polluted places on Earth, I can observe planets just fine. However, nebulae, or even the outline of the Milky Way, are difficult or impossible to see.
(This is related to amateur astronomy.)
Look upon NYC at night time from a tall building, it looks much like looking at another galaxy. I could stare at the city for hours.
Honest question: why shouldn't they be okay with it?
I was a Boy Scout and I saw the stars at night during camp outs. I've seen the night's sky from the middle of the New Mexico desert. It was very pretty, but I've seen it.
It's not that I don't have a sense of wonder. Heck, I'm a post-doctoral researcher in physics and I've been trying to teach myself cosmology as a hobby. Yet, from my perspective, being able to see the stars every night like being able to see Niagara Falls every night. It's something that you should certainly do once and I don't begrudge those who want it part of their daily life, but I don't think that it needs to be the default option.
You seem to disagree, so I'm wondering what it is that I'm missing.
But no one cares. Why don't they care? I don't know. For me, the inability to see the stars at night is like not being able to see the sun during the day. It's like every night is cloudy.
I think it's unfair to kids in particular that they're missing out on this. (I realize there are worse "accident of birth" things to worry about, like safety and shelter and having enough to eat, but I'm trying to stay on-topic.)
I don't know... not being able to see the stars strikes me as one or two steps away from living underground, or never looking up.
That opportunity to look up and see stars should be a natural night state for us and our children.
Cities can take on a sort of self-importance, an introspective ego, anyhow, since there's so much available that you can be permanently distracted from looking outward or upward. Can't say it wasn't a fun place, but it's not my cuppa joe. But I could easily imagine a [native?] city dweller feeling like they're not missing anything.
[EDIT: I guess I just figure some people live in the city because it gives them everything they need. But it certainly made me feel like I lost my sky. I'd be curious to know if you grew up in the city; so far, it seems like that feeling of loss or wrongness is just for people who grew up outside them.]
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If you have a camera with manual control, give it a try. You need a wide angle lens, otherwise you'll get star trails quickly.
The summer Milky Way will look brighter.
If the author is referring to the galactic center being in view, then wouldn't that depend on whether it's summer in the northern hemisphere, or the southern hemisphere? After all, each hemisphere's summer is looking the opposite direction.
If the author is simply referring to the season, well I'd think the winter - having longer nights, colder atmosphere, and, at some latitudes, having nights period - would lead to darker skies and better viewing.
Can any one enlighten me?
The data hasn't been updated since 2006 but the change should not be that much different. I've contacted the author in the past, for some technical explanation:
The NOAA data is the light source data. It uses the light source data as input to a model of light propagation in the atmosphere to estimate the light pollution.
This takes into account that the light pollution from a town or city (or natural gas field!) can affect the level of light pollution at locations far removed from the light source.
Technically, my light pollution atlas is the amount of artificial sky brightness at zenith.
[0] cities on a planet of the
[1] atmosphere of a planet of the
[2] majority of the stars of the
[3] only known inhabitants of the
Where the text discusses the origin of the term "Milky Way", I wish they would give the Greek name γαλαξίας κύκλος (at least in transliteration) rather than only giving the translation 'milky circle'. (The text does give the original Latin "via lactea").
I remember when the term γαλαξία was referenced in an amazing conlang puzzle which led to a series of events culminating in my awareness that γαλαξίας is ancient Greek for 'galaxy' (sort of), whereas γαλαξία is ancient Greek for 'milkshake' (sort of).
You can look up CA dark sky sites here: http://www.observingsites.com/ds_ca.htm
Andromeda looks pretty good (bright) through some of the large scopes that people bring up there, as well. (magnification is fairly trivial, you need a large telescope to get brightness)
In any case, anyone affected by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 got to see a lot more of the Milky Way. I have never seen it more clearly than during the blackout.
Anyone know what this band represents?
http://shalenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/eagle_ford_ma...
He he, those cloudy patches are what keeps OPEC up at night.
Basically, how can you NOT see the Milky Way, assuming you don't have some sort of ridiculous light pollution blocking all visibility?
What would the night sky look like with the milky way subtracted out?
Thanks in advance!
Would be nice if we could find some kind of galactic sized mirror
Besides, it seems the servergator ate the site.