Starship Asterisk*

Starry Night over Dubai

Explanation: A starry night over the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is really not so starry. In fact, the Moon is the only celestial beacon to come close to competing with city lights in this night skyscape, a situation all too familiar to urban skygazers. The futuristic looking scene is dominated by the 800 meter tall Khalifa Tower, presently the tallest free standing structure on planet Earth. But for now you should also be able to make out a few of the very brightest stars in Earth's night sky. Capella is left of the tower and Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Rigel, and stars in Orion's Belt can just be identified in the heavily light-polluted skies. Need some help finding them? Slide your cursor over the image.

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Aha! Another kingdom on APOD==albeit Middle Ages absolutist {cf. Kingdom of the Bahamas where women are equal citizens}. Anne==you go, girl












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Clicking the Khalifa Tower link takes you to a google map view that reveals businesses in the adjacent mall, particularly Fatburger, a restaurant I have enjoyed in Tempe, Arizona. I know it might not be the best U.S. export, but I do love that we have a global culture, it does make me feel like I live in the times I read about in science fiction as a child.

islader2 wrote:Aha! Another kingdom on APOD==albeit Middle Ages absolutist {cf. Kingdom of the Bahamas where women are equal citizens}. Anne==you go, girl

If you mean me, islader2, so thanks!!

Today's APOD is beautiful, and the cityscape of Dubai is incredibly impressive. But the light-polluted sky is depressing. I tried to spot the Pleiades in the picture, but I couldn't. Of course, the Pleiades should be very close to the galre of the Moon, so it's no wonder that this gem of a cluster is hard or impossible to find.

Ann

I spent a lot of time in the Gulf when I was in the Navy and between the gas flares from the offshore oil rigs and the general haze from blowing sand it's not a great sky viewing area even if you are away from urban lights.

Yes, I meant you. Sorry for the extra "e" in your name. There is a huge picture of Anne of Green Gables in the room where I type this==a gritty person who reminds me of your solonic contributions to this forum.

islader2 wrote:
Yes, I meant you. Sorry for the extra "e" in your name. There is a huge picture of Anne of Green Gables in the room where I type this==a gritty person who reminds me of your solonic contributions to this forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Green_Gables wrote:
<<Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908. Montgomery found inspiration in the "formula Ann" orphan stories, the Anns without the e.

• Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, brother and sister who live together at Green Gables, a farm in Avonlea on Prince Edward Island in Canada, decide to adopt a boy [Rob Stevenson ] from an 'orphan' asylum in Nova Scotia as a helper on their farm. Through a series of mishaps, the person who ends up under their roof is a precocious girl of eleven named Anne Shirley. Anne is bright and quick, eager to please and talkative, and extremely imaginative. She does not see herself as beautiful, but is interesting-looking, with a pale countenance dotted with freckles, and long braids of red hair. She would really like to be called Cordelia; but she insists that if you are to call her Anne, it must be spelt with an 'E', as that spelling is "so much more distinguished.">>

I like the picture even though you can't see the stars. It's sad that Cities aren't developed to reduce light pollution!

orin stepanek wrote:
I like the picture even though you can't see the stars.
It's sad that Cities aren't developed to reduce light pollution!

It's sad that the sky picture wasn't taken from the top of the 800 meter tall Khalifa Tower.

Several years back, my company sent me to Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of weeks. There was clear, virtually cloudless weather all the time I was there, but never saw any stars in the sky. After about a week and a half, I finally drove about 50 miles out of town. There, the night sky was beautiful.
I was offered a chance to move to Omaha. I declined. The dead empty sky was too depressing. For all the money and high tech goodies, it seems like Dubai is Omaha with taller buildings.

D L Hall wrote:
Several years back, my company sent me to Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of weeks. There was clear, virtually cloudless weather all the time I was there, but never saw any stars in the sky. After about a week and a half, I finally drove about 50 miles out of town. There, the night sky was beautiful. I was offered a chance to move to Omaha. I declined. The dead empty sky was too depressing. For all the money and high tech goodies, it seems like Dubai is Omaha with taller buildings.

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Prologue of the Second Nun's Tale <<I wish to expound to you first the name of the saint, as one may read in her history. It signifies, as one would say in English, "heaven's lily;" her name was lily for the pure chastity of her virginity; or because she had the whiteness of honor and the green of conscience and the sweet savor of good fame, was she called a lily. Or Cecilia is as if one should say "the way for the blind," because she was an example through her good teaching.

Or else, as I see in the books, the name Cecilia is compounded by a manner of joining "heaven" and "Leah;" and here symbolically heaven is set forth for meditation upon holiness, and Leah for her ceaseless activity. Cecilia may also be interpreted "lacking blindness," for her great light of wisdom, and for her shining virtues. Or else, lo, this maiden's bright name comes from "heaven" and "leos"; because one may well rightly call her, the example of all good and wise works, "heaven of people," for "leos" signifies people in English.

And even as one can see in the heaven the sun and the moon and everywhere the stars, even so may one see spiritually in this noble maiden the magnanimity of faith, and the perfect clearness of wisdom as well, and various bright and excellent works. And even as these philosophers say that heaven is swift and round and burning, so was the fair white Cecilia ever swift and diligent in good works, and perfect in her perseverance of goodness, and ever burning brightly with love. Now have I declared to you what her name signified.>>

"Tower of Babel" higher than the "Stars of Heaven"....

Good Grief!!!

GC's expound-ations will never make a quick, catchy tune ..... After diligently wading through all his verbage just to signify a name, I'm left wondering how he ever had enough ink and paper to write much more ....

(With apologies to all Chaucer fans.)

Why do you only state the height in metric? Aren't you being culturally insensitive? Be a little more inclusive and tolerant of othert cultures.

dshoezzz@gmail.com wrote:
Why do you only state the height in metric? Aren't you being culturally insensitive? Be a little more inclusive and tolerant of othert cultures.

828 meters = 1597 Sumerian Nippur cubits = 26.84 femtoparsecs = 4.116 furlongs

Dubai in the United Arabic Emirates.
Many artificial light.
The stars bright in the sky, but here, in the sky of Dubai can´t to see.
Human Nature vs. Astronomical Nature.

Is that Babak Tafreshi standing by the railing on the left side of the picture?

D L Hall wrote:Several years back, my company sent me to Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of weeks. There was clear, virtually cloudless weather all the time I was there, but never saw any stars in the sky. After about a week and a half, I finally drove about 50 miles out of town. There, the night sky was beautiful.
I was offered a chance to move to Omaha. I declined. The dead empty sky was too depressing. For all the money and high tech goodies, it seems like Dubai is Omaha with taller buildings.

50 miles out or Omaha could take you to North Bend Nebraska; a small town and home town of Marg Helgenberger! You shouldn't have to have traveled that far to see your stars. All Nebraska has is little towns and few cities. Not much trouble for driving a mile of two to see the stars. When I was a kid in Schuyler you could look up in your back yard and see the milky way. I live in a larger city than that now but I can still see a few stars from my back yard on a clear night. The Big and Little Dipper and Orion are among favorites.

neufer wrote:828 meters = 1597 Sumerian Nippur cubits = 26.84 femtoparsecs = 4.116 furlongs

LOL!!! Laughed so hard I almost fell off my feet!

-Noel

NoelC wrote:LOL!!! Laughed so hard I almost fell off my feet!

Ah! Another means of measurement. How many feet did you almost fall off, NoelC

: Well, Ann,as Art so succinctly eluded Maud Montgomery Anniesque opera litera. ANNE== with an "E"== sounds very elegant as the residents of PEI could well tell us. {One can visit all the counties of PEI [three] in a trice}. Without a passport, one may do three [counties] in a trice in a trike in Delaware as that is all there are.

islader2 wrote:: Well, Ann,as Art so succinctly eluded Maud Montgomery Anniesque opera litera. ANNE== with an "E"== sounds very elegant as the residents of PEI could well tell us. {One can visit all the counties of PEI [three] in a trice}. Without a passport, one may do three [counties] in a trice in a trike in Delaware as that is all there are.

Wow - I'm not absolutely sure what this means, but I'm impressed. PEI = Prince Edward Island, I got that! I also read Anne of Green Gables when I was a kid. This is what the book cover looked like when I read "Anne på Grönkulla" in the mid- to late sixties. Sorry I couldn't find a larger picture:



I'm not absolutely sure what thrice in a trike means, but it sounds good! Also I'm not absolutely sure what Delaware is doing here, since I'm sure that Delaware is not where Anne of Green Gables lived, but hey.. there may be more similarities between Prince Edward Island and Delaware than I realize...



Prince Edward Island, Canada.



Delaware, USA.

Ann

I had difficulty spotting most of the named stars in the APOD (that may of course have been the idea). There is however a photo in Babak Tafreshi's gallery in The World At Night website which is (to me) much better than the version used as the APOD. The one in Babak's gallery is a cropped version, having a less wide field-of-view than the full width version that was used as the APOD. I think the version used by Babak would have been better to use as the APOD (if it was available to use).

I am utterly disgusted by this picture. It may look beautiful but it shows what horrible ideals our civilization has today. Blot out the beauties of nature with those bright lights. Was not there someting of value here before we humans started building? Also anyone heard of climate change? As well as blocking the beautiful night sky, these lights are releasing excesss greenhouse gases needlessly into the atmosphere. I am using the picture as a poster to show people what we do NOT need more of today. Complete ostentacousness by the rich society that built Dubai. Think of what good could be done to help the needy in the world instead of spending money to build and run this view.

raindrop wrote:
I am utterly disgusted by this picture.
It may look beautiful but it shows what horrible ideals our civilization has today.
Blot out the beauties of nature with those bright lights.

Like it or not, mankind is as much a part of nature as anything else.