Maybe suburbs provide enough clarity of the night sky for most, I’m not sure. Still, the suburbs will never be the natural environment that undeveloped forests or parks could be.
Even if it was a simple car headed down the street, I'd be nothing but paranoid.
when the lights are on, EVERYONE'S exposed. No hiding.
But the sheer amount of "flattening" and deforestation I "saw" (as it is easy to not notice it if you consider agricultural land normal) built up to a really unpalatable and disturbing feeling.
It was the first time I felt like I had some rational belief that the human population really should be reduced. Without some wonderful energy source that can provide a worthwhile substitute for sunlight, food production is necessarily limited to the top 0.2-1.5m of land (right?). From aesthetic to environmental factors, it really seems like an awful thing to reduce so much of the fertile lands to just that.
You can see the structure of the Milky Way sometimes.
Even satellites and planes look like absurd neon signs out in the country.
In reality if you manage to get to one of the few places left on earth that are truly dark sky places and you catch it during a new moon, the spectacular lights are really not that far off
Unfortunately the vast majority of internet denizens today have never truly experienced a dark sky during a new moon. An experience that just 200 years ago almost every human has had
In dark sky spots in New Zealand, places where you commonly have photographers producing amazing colourful photos, this[0] is what you usually see with the naked eye.
The brightest I've personally seen the Milky Way was at the Atacama desert and it looked like [1].
0. https://petapixel.com/2015/04/04/what-the-naked-eye-sees-in-...
1. https://amazingsky.photoshelter.com/image/I0000Lyu0eggqPYo
Why? That's actually true.
I've been to many truly dark sky sites. I get out to one at least once a year on average. I've photographed the Milky Way, galaxies, nebulae, you name it. Under dark skies, the milky way is an amazing site. But don't be mistaken: it's still gray in appearance to the naked eye.
Let's look at this in a few different ways:
1) The pupil of the human eye opens to about 7mm (if you're young) under truly dark skies. That is the limiting aperture that determines how many photons strike the retina. The human visual system is optimized to detect motion. The integration time for the image you see in your brain is maybe 1/30th of a second. When I photograph the Milky Way, I use a 14mm f/1.8 lens (that's a 14mm/1.8=7.8mm aperture) with about a 30 second exposure. Those two factors alone put the camera at a (7.8/7)^2 * 30/(1/30) = 1111x higher exposure level. The camera also has ISO levels for further gain.
2) The human eye has two types of receptors: cones and rods. Cones are used for color vision. Rods are used for low light vision. It takes more photons to stimulate a cone than it does a rod. So when you're looking at faint objects, you might not be able to discern their color. The reason people like me seek out dark skies is because the objects we're trying to see are at the limits of detectability and we'll take whatever advantage we can get. Even when viewing through my 4-inch telescope, most objects appear gray. And that's with a (106/7)^2 = 229x light gathering advantage over the naked eye.
3) Have you ever thought about why it's called the Milky Way? It comes from the name given to it by the ancient Greeks. It appeared to them as a streak of milk in the sky (and they didn't have modern light pollution issues). What color is milk?
The first couple of nights, I was amazed at what I could see, but then I was a bit annoyed about this one strip of clouds that was blocking part of my view across the entire sky. The next night I realized it wasn't a cloud :). "My God, it's full of stars."
Portugal is relatively close to NL, and it has some spectacular sky viewing which isn't too remote from villages or places to stay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale
Must be quite something.
I live in a civilized country but 45 minutes from the closest highway and far from any city, so I get to enjoy beautiful night skies. But satellites are already polluting it : (
Also, dumb question but: can't satellites be made to not emit any light and to not reflect it?
It was in South Africa. We were driving with a roofed jeep on some plains in search of nocturnal wildlife. Then, the driver stopped and told us to get out. It was freezing and he prepared hot chocolate from the back of the car.
He killed his search light and it got so dark that we could not see our own hands. And then we looked up.
Holy shit. I'm not a melodramatic person but this was the first time in my life that I experienced living on a planet, connected to something far greater. I mean, I knew this to be the case, but I never experienced it. Because I normally live under the clouds and a yellow haze.
I experienced it once more in Colombia where I could see the Milky Way with the naked eye.
It's sad that an experience that should be a given has become so rare. I'm especially frustrated with all the lights that have no purpose. Nobody goes to admire the architecture of your church at 3AM at night. Nor do you have to decorate your backyard so excessively with obnoxious lights whilst you are sleeping.