Having lived in urban areas my whole life, I’ve only been able to see the Milky Way a few times. The first time was when I was in middle-of-nowhere West Virginia as a teenager (on vacation at a state park). We had a clear night, with little in the way of moonlight, and the Milky Way was clearly visible. It was a surprising, and breathtaking, sight.
I just posted this link in the other current astronomy geek out thread, but people following here might be interested as well:
Here’s an interactive visualization (warning: it plays music) of stars with known position in our galaxy. Hit the little graph icon in the top right and it shows you a point for the mapped stars showing position and temperature. It’s pretty clear that there’s a fairly uniform distribution of stars within a few hundred light years.
No, not that colorful (since you’re night vision operates off of rods rather than cones). But the linked photograph which shows the red gaseous nebulas embedded in the Milky Way? I’ve seen those naked eye - they’re just not red, they’re soft grey. And you can see a surprising amount of texture in the Milky Way (including many dust tangles and small dust lanes) once your eyes are fully dark-adapted. It almost looks three-dimensional. It’s nothing like a featureless faint glow,as Esox Lucius implied in his first post.
Of course, he’s also observing from a much higher latitude, where Sagittarius and Scorpius don’t rise very far above the horizon, and that also makes a difference. The further south you can go (until you reach the equator), the better the view of the summer Milky Way will be.
Exactly. Most people look at the Milky Way, but they don’t really know how to LOOK at it, if you get it. Most people have to be taught how to use their eyes to maximum effect in the dark, and they also don’t know it takes about an hour for full dark adaptation to set in (and that any exposure to white light sets the clock back to zero).
Under a Bortle Class 1 or Class 2 sky, with fully dark-adapted eyes, the Milky Way is a stunning sight. I’m sad it’s a sight most people to day will never get to see.
I know that as “averted vision”. It comes in handy for looking at the Andromeda Galaxy (known as the furthest object we can see with the naked eye, about 2.1 million light years away). Even under ideal viewing conditions, it’s just a faint smudge, and is more visible if you move your eyes a bit to the side.
That’s possible. I remember being excited by my first view of the Orion nebula through a friend’s new 8-inch Newtonian telescope. There was more detail than I had ever seen through a smaller scope. The next time, I was disappointed in it, presumably because my expectation had been coloured by the comparison and not what I actually saw.
It’s also possible that your night vision is better than mine, but without offering it as proof of any kind, I should point out that among my star-gazing friends, my vision is a bit better than a few of them and pretty much equal to the others, except for one guy who seems to see fainter objects a bit better (we occasionally have had little tests for bragging rights). But even he doesn’t see the Milky Way as well as it looks in photos.
That reminds of news interviews with New Yorkers during the last big blackout in the U.S. when they remarked on how they could see stars, like it was a big deal. It hit home to me that living in a less populated area has its advantages.
The next time you find yourself under a truly dark sky in late summer or autumn, see if you can spot M33 in Triangulum and compare it to the Andromeda Galaxy. M33 is also a spiral galaxy, and it’s about the same size as the Andromeda Galaxy, but it’s oriented face on to us (while the Andromeda Galaxy is tilted a bit sideways). M33 is a direct-vision object under a really dark sky, but it’s considerably fainter than the Andromeda Galaxy. The two objects make a really neat contrast!
Definitely. You have the great fortune to experience the world as it was back when we were all primitive hunter-gatherers, the world we evolved in.
I’ve often contemplated that one of the reasons light pollution has become so bad is that, in general, humans notice presence rather than absence. When was the last time you looked up at the sky and thought “Where are all the passenger pigeons?” I bet the answer is never. A billion birds once filled the skies in North American, and yet we almost never notice their absence. Ditto with the buffalo, the North American locust, the Carolina parakeet, etc.
And that’s why light pollution has got such a grip. Most people, having been raised in urban areas, see their star-paupered sky overhead as normal. They literally don’t know what they are missing. How do you fight a problem when people don’t even recognize the problem’s existence?
Actually, this is another good description, except I might even take out the “almost.” The sky had a depth to it that I’d never seen before.
I’ll definitely do that, but it probably won’t be till spring at the earliest. One of the disadvantages of living here is the bitterly cold winters, and this one has been particularly brutal.
That’s exactly my thought as I look up at the night sky. I’m conscious of seeing it just as all my ancient forebears through the ages would have seen it (with a few minor exceptions, of course, but not enough to ruin the effect). It helps to give some perspective on our lives today. And on a purely practical level, I know that if I’m ever lost in a remote area, I can get my bearings by looking at Polaris.
I once saw a cartoon showing an old shepherd and a modern businessman in a suit. The shepherd is saying with disbelief, “You mean you’ve never seen Arcturus?”
Bit of an overstatement, there, given that Arcturus is the fourth-brightest star in the night sky, and would be visible even from downtown Las Vegas. Though granted that the businessman probably didn’t recognize it.
No kidding! Fortunately both constellations (Andromeda and Triangulum) are best viewed in the fall, so there’s no rush to try the experiment.
It does nicely illustrate how two objects emitting essentially the same amount of light can vary dramatically in visibility solely based on their orientation. if the Andromeda Galaxy was tilted face on to us, as M33 is, it would be just as dim as M33. But the angle at which we view it makes it the brightest spiral galaxy in our night sky.
Arcturus may be visibile from downtown Las Vegas, but this new supernova isn’t. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere and are willing to brave the cold, grab a telescope or some binoculars and go outside and see it!
I don’t know about that; M31 has about 25 times as many stars as M33. And it’s considerably closer than any other spiral other than M33.
I think it was more of a statement on how meaningless the night sky has become to us nowadays, and that he has never bothered to look up at the stars.
I guess I’d buy that. Almost everyone has seen Arcturus, but probably very few have ever looked at it.
I saw the Milky Way on a dark night with no light pollution, once, for 20 minutes, in… No, actually, it was longer than 20 minutes, and it wasn’t quite as far back as 1960. It was in the middle of nowhere in Malawi.
It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen.
Living in cities has its perks, but they really screw up the night sky for us.
Green Acres is the place to be,
Farm livin’ is the life for me.
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide,
Keep Manhattan, just give me that starry sky.
“Arcturus? Luxury sedan right? Haven’t seen one yet, no.”
Yeh, it bums me out.
Anytime I casually note how bright Venus is or, point to Jupiter, or spot the faint smudge of the Orion Nebula, plenty of friends and family have been dubious the planets and other stuff besides boring ol’ stars are that easy to spot or see.
Most people just don’t care to look at the sky anymore and enjoy it, let alone become curious about it. And I have to think it’s because of the light pollution. No one really realizes how stunning and it is, because they’ve really never seen it.
Anytime I go camping way out in the sticks, I try to plan around a new moon, so we can stay out, bonfire blazing, and stargaze. When it’s that brilliant, most everyone I know tilts back and soaks it in for hours.