For a large part of my life I have always wanted to see the Milky Way in all it’s glory but I have never lived or been to a place where it has been dark enough to see more than maybe a few hundred stars. I want to see thousands and in a distinct band across the sky.
Google Earth has a nice feature where it will show you the light pollution in a certain area. It goes from no color to blue, green, yellow, orange, red and white is the most light pollution.
I unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) live in the red in Palmdale, CA but Pearsonville, CA, which is a 2 hour drive, has no color over it what-so-ever. Thursday is my day off so tomorrow night will be the perfect night to go star gazing out there. If I could see the Milky Way it would be well worth the trip.
Does anyone know if I would be able to see the Milky Way there?
I-395 goes right through there and it seems to be going into the darkness. I would be willing to travel up to another hour past Pearsonville if I could see the night sky in all its glory.
I’m afraid you won’t see the Milky Way anywhere tomorrow - it’s only a couple of days past full moon. You need to go when the moon is not up in the sky.
You will not be able to see the Milky Way as distinct stars with the naked eye, just as a faint wash of lighter sky. Nobody had any inkling that it was made up of stars before Galileo turned his telescope on it in 1610.
These days, however, a reasonably decent pair of binoculars should be plenty enough to see teh distinct stars.
A week away from full moon should be sufficient. At first quarter (a week before full moon), the moon would set around midnight, and you have a dark sky till twilight. At 3rd quarter (a week after full moon), the moon won’t rise till midnight.
And I think any area that’s “black” in the light pollution map should be dark enough to see the milky way.
This page has both the overlay and marked spots where people report on places they’ve visited.
If the road is clear, you might want to head up Hwy 178 to Walker Pass. It’s tagged as ‘very dark sky’, and at 5000’ you’ll get a bit of a better view. Looks like there’s BLM land up there you can camp out on or just hang out at.
Although I haven’t seen the Milky Way for many years now due to living on the foggy west coast of North America under towering trees, as a younger person I lay on my back in a meadow on a moonless night in the high Sierra and the Milky Way was not just a faint wash of lighter sky, it was more like a hallucination of falling upward into an infinity of clouds of stars. No binoculars on me. Highly recommended.
Well, imagination can be nice, perhaps especially when it is informed by known fact. However, the fact remains that throughout the millennia of human history preceding 1610, during which skies were clear, light pollution minimal, and many people devoted their lives to observing the sky, nobody saw that the Milky Way consisted of stars. By contrast, with a telescope to his eye, Galileo could see it pretty much right away.
Of course, in the High Sierras, on a clear night, you will see a lot more stars than you will in a light-polluted city, and it is a very spectacular sight, but those stars are not the Milky Way.
(OK, in the modern sense of the term, where "Milky Way is used to mean our home galaxy, they are stars in the Milky Way, and are (a very small) part of it. But that is not what the ancients were referring to by the term, nor is it what people mean today when they talk about seeing the Milky Way. In that context, it means the faint, irregular band of light across the sky that is now known to be caused by huge numbers of very distant stars that cannot be resolved by the naked eye, and that constitute the central regions of our galaxy.)
Now that the question is mostly answered, I have to say that it never occurred to me that there are people in the US that have never seen the Milky Way.
I’ve been in the city for the last 5 years or so, and so I don’t tend to think about it. I visited my in-laws over Christmas and they are in a very remote area. When I looked up on a clear cold night, it occurred to me how amazing it was and how much I had forgotten it.
You should be able to see it by just driving up into the Angeles National forest somewhere.
I live near San Jose, and I’ve seen it by going a few miles up Mt Hamilton Road, which is still in the city limits, and only about 15 minutes from downtown San Jose.
I’ve also seen it easily in Carmel-- in the neighborhoods or down at the beach.
If you drive a few miles past Pearsonville, there’s a neat place called Fossil Falls with a small parking area/primitive camping spot. I’ve spent the night there and the stargazing is pretty decent.
I second the recommendation. You have to see the Milky Way. I saw it in rural Atlantic Canada and must say it was a life experience. I’m fairly convinced that you can’t see it ANYWHERE on the Mid-Atlantic US Seaboard.
Me and a friend went up to Mount Pinos a few years back. Very dark and a lot of amatuer astronomers up there that will let you look through their telescopes and tell you what you’re looking at.
I do, but I’m an old lady. I’m the only one I know who occasionally uses “tonic” too. “Wicked cool” is used here to invoke a more youthful enthusiasm and exuberance for the stunning images at The World at Night.
