Starship Asterisk*

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060806.html
Amazing what out city light can hide. Hopefully we can keep some dark spots on Earth so views like this can be enjoyed for generations to come.
Orin

We were camping in the upper pennisula of Michigan far from any town a couple weeks ago. I woke up at about 3:30 am (nature call :) ) and when I got out of the tent; I looked up and what I saw was very very close to this picture only the sky around the stars was blacker. It floored me. I have never seen the sky with my own eyes that looked like that. The milky way was bright and clear and I could see the dark matter clouds within it to, just like the photo.
I woke up my wife and it floored her too. I sat up and just looked at the sky for about an hour, wishing I had a pair of binoculars.

I had a similar experience, travelling to Algonquin park here in Ontario. Waking up in the wee hours of the morning to look up at the moonless night sky, that had so many stars visible that it was blue instead of black. You could actually see stars reflected in the lake. That was impressive. City kids now-a-days don't know what they're missing in the sky.

I too was impressed with this photograph. and started a thread on the dpreview.com site concerning taking such photographs with the latest DSLR camera

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=19481707

Hello All

The link that Orin posted. The image is on 20 second exposure.
Imagine 60 seconds
Imagine 1 day,,,,,,,,,,if it could stay in one position,,,,,,the sky would be filled with stars.

This observation would really put the BBT into problems.

That's been one of my more common grievances since I moved to the city. I almost never get to see the sky like that anymore.

I remember my first year away at school wandering around for about two hours in November trying to find a good spot to view the meteor shower from (Leonids?). The darkest spot I found was someplace I wasn't supposed to be, and someone saw me walk down there and reported it, so I spent about 10 minutes standing stock still behind a tree while campus security searched all over with the spotlight on their car.

There was still too much ambient light, so for the entire evening out in the cold I only saw 2 or 3 meteors.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060809.html
Another evening wonder that gets lost in the city lights.
Orin